Levi Troyer
Levi Troyer and his wife, Laura, part of an Amish community in Ohio, were among the first three families to be baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Levi often spent evenings with his neighbor Raymond Weaver discussing business and a wide variety of topics. One evening, Weaver started telling Levi about the Book of Mormon. Levi also noticed something had changed in Weaver, and he wanted whatever it was. He asked Weaver for a copy of the Book of Mormon. As questions came to him, he took notes and asked Weaver for answers. Weaver introduced Troyer to the stake president and mission president, and Troyer called them with his questions or met with them. Finally, Weaver told Troyer that he and his wife had been rebaptized.
- Raymond told Levi about the importance of being baptized by immersion and the proper priesthood authority. “He gave me a ton of information that very evening, and I just didn't know what to make of it,” he says. “I knew if I did something like this . . . I knew what was going to happen. If you get shunned, you lose your family members, your parents—in a sense, you lose everything.”[1]
Levi told his wife about his conversation with Weaver and said they needed to be baptized by immersion. She said, “I know.” “That was the most peaceful, joyful feeling I’ve ever had, and I just knew that it was true.”[2] They were baptized on April 17, 2012, and joined the Weavers in meeting together for sacrament meeting.
- Laura Troyer’s parents invited Laura and Levi over to their house to meet with the Amish church leaders. Laura and Levi hoped they would be given a chance to explain their choice and offer their testimonies, but as Levi’s parents and some of his siblings arrived, Levi and Laura’s mothers started crying, people began shouting over one another, and the entire discussion dissolved into chaos.
- Everything in the confrontation focused blame on the Book of Mormon. Levi distinctly remembers his brother nearly shouting before he left, “Just get that book out of your house tonight. Take it out and burn it. Just get rid of that book.”
- But “that book” and the spirit it brought to the Troyers is what offered them peace and refuge during this time.
- Levi adds, “There was an added measure of the Spirit. . . . I don't know how to describe it other than it was like sitting inside a bubble hearing everything that was being said, but they couldn't hurt us,” Levi recalls.
Their children were also shunned and not allowed to attend the Amish school. The Church called senior couples who taught the children for three years.
Levi, who owned a construction company with mostly Amish employees who quit when the shunning began, gave his business to his brothers and began working in the family bakery, which lost all its Amish employees.
“Without the extra added strength and layers and layers of protection from the Holy Spirit and extreme care, concern, and help from the members of the Mount Vernon Ward, there's no way we could have ever done this,” Levi acknowledges. “I'm sure the Lord knew this. He was very aware of everything that was going on in our lives. He protected us many times and still does to this day.”[3]
After three years of the Weaver, Troyer, and Hochstetler families meeting together, they were incorporated into a local ward. They were each sealed together as eternal families in the temple.
