Family friend: Amish girl asked to be shot to save others

www.byzcath.org

What courageous love on the part of someone so young. Eternal memory!

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Family friend: Amish girl asked to be shot to save others
POSTED: 4:32 p.m. EDT, October 6, 2006

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- One of the girls who died in Pennsylvania's Amish schoolhouse massacre asked the killer to shoot her first in an apparent bid to save the younger girls, a woman who spoke to the victim's family said Friday.

Rita Rhoads, a nurse-midwife who delivered 13-year-old Marian Fisher as well as another victim, said Fisher appealed to Charles Carl Roberts IV to shoot her first because she thought it might allow younger girls to survive.

Rhoads said she did not know whether Fisher in fact was shot first. Roberts shot 10 girls ages 6 to 13, killing five of them and then himself in Monday's rampage. (Watch "shocked and sad" Amish express forgiveness -- 2:46)

Fisher's 11-year-old sister, Barbie, appealed to Roberts to shoot her next, Rhoads said. Barbie survived and was in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia recovering from shoulder, hand and leg injuries.

"Barbie has been talking and she said Marian said, 'Shoot me first,"' Rhoads said. "Apparently what she was trying to do was to save the younger girls."

Barbie, who attended her sister's funeral Thursday before returning to the hospital, gave details of her ordeal to relatives including her grandfather, who told Rhoads, the midwife said in a telephone interview.

"It was very courageous of the girls to offer themselves," Rhoads said. "God was really present to give the girls that kind of courage."

Pennsylvania state police were not immediately available for comment.

Roberts, 32, a local non-Amish milk truck driver, attacked the one-room schoolhouse at Nickel Mines, a farming community in Lancaster County about 60 miles west of Philadelphia.

He allowed boys and adults to leave and then tied the legs of the girls before shooting them, police said.

Four of the girls including Marian Fisher were buried Thursday and a fifth funeral was being buried Friday.

The Amish, descendants of Swiss-German settlers, are a traditionalist Christian denomination who place particular importance on the Gospel message of forgiveness. They believe in nonviolence, simple living and little contact with the modern world.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Dear Ebed,

I was thinking about what one Elder said. He said he wondered what they might have done wrong. I thought about it, and wondered that maybe God doesn't want them to avoid the modern world, etc. But then I realized that if they didn't their children would be exposed to all the immorality that other children are.

Well after giving it much thought, I realized that they didn't do anything wrong, but rather did everything right.I decided to write this open letter to the family:

To the Parents of the Blessed Martyrs,

My dearest people, know that in your grief God has looked favorably upon you, for in your faithfulness and through His Love, He has bestowed a gift that few receive. Do not think that your beloved daughters were taken because of any faults within your society. They were taken because of your holiness. The girls died as true martyrs so that through their death, God could grant His Graces and Mercies on the whole world.

When He took away your children, and you so lovingly forgave the killer�s family, God was showing the secular world the love of true Christians. He was showing those that look towards lawsuits and compensation, that forgiveness is the only thing of importance.

When He took away your children, and you so lovingly forgave the killer�s family, He was showing religions that practice modesty in dress, that it is not only modesty, but the heart that is important. Without forgiveness and love, there is no God.

When He took away your children, He was showing the world your Christian community, and how a community can exist within an immoral society and yet maintain their own morals and values. That people need not be dependant on governments and others for sustenance, but should be committed through Christian love in providing for each other.

Be proud and know that you have been blessed.. There is not another people in this world where God could have given such a wonderful example of Christian love, modesty, humility, and a lack of selfishness. It was only by giving the world a knowledge of your community, that God was able to give such a wonderful example of His love. It was through you that He was able to reach the secular humanists in this country and in Europe, that love for one�s fellow man can only exist through Christianity..and it was only through your example, that God was able to reach the followers of Mohammed so that they would know that it is not only modesty in dress and sexual morals that is important, but the love and forgiveness within one�s heart.

Zenovia

A beautiful prayer, Zenovia. I have been moved by many aspects of this terrible tragedy, but this story brought me to tears. This young girl offered herself for love to a cold-blooded killer as a sacrificial lamb for her sisters.

How beauiful and horrible all at once.

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To the Parents of the Blessed Martyrs,

My dearest people, know that in your grief God has looked favorably upon you, for in your faithfulness and through His Love, He has bestowed a gift that few receive. Do not think that your beloved daughters were taken because of any faults within your society. They were taken because of your holiness. The girls died as true martyrs so that through their death, God could grant His Graces and Mercies on the whole world.

When He took away your children, and you so lovingly forgave the killer�s family, God was showing the secular world the love of true Christians. He was showing those that look towards lawsuits and compensation, that forgiveness is the only thing of importance.

When He took away your children, and you so lovingly forgave the killer�s family, He was showing religions that practice modesty in dress, that it is not only modesty, but the heart that is important. Without forgiveness and love, there is no God.

When He took away your children, He was showing the world your Christian community, and how a community can exist within an immoral society and yet maintain their own morals and values. That people need not be dependant on governments and others for sustenance, but should be committed through Christian love in providing for each other.

Be proud and know that you have been blessed.. There is not another people in this world where God could have given such a wonderful example of Christian love, modesty, humility, and a lack of selfishness. It was only by giving the world a knowledge of your community, that God was able to give such a wonderful example of His love. It was through you that He was able to reach the secular humanists in this country and in Europe, that love for one�s fellow man can only exist through Christianity..and it was only through your example, that God was able to reach the followers of Mohammed so that they would know that it is not only modesty in dress and sexual morals that is important, but the love and forgiveness within one�s heart.

Zenovia

Amen. This was truly a beautiful prayer!

In Christ,
Alice

No greater love has a little girl than this: that she lay down her life for her friends.

May this little martyr shine like 1000 suns in the Heavenly Kingdom!