Emuna on the Prairie – Part 2
Return to the Daniels family in South Dakota to hear the amazing story of how Hashem engineered a very special match for their daughter out on the prairie...
This is a continuation of Light on the Prairie.
It’s part of the human condition to wonder, perhaps on a daily basis, what Hashem has planned for us. Even though we know He is a loving Creator, the ultimate Author with amazing opportunities in store for each of us, we get impatient. We try to connect the dots, to jump ahead, to skip chapters in the book. That’s when we must rely on emuna, trust in Hashem. We need to close our eyes and take the leap, trusting that Hashem will be right there with us to work it out.
Enter the Daniels. The Daniels are a little family with giant hearts who we introduced you to last week at Breslev Israel. They live out in the middle of the far reaches of nowhere. Don’t get me wrong, as you can see from these incredible photos, South Dakota is seriously pretty. The nature is magnificent. It’s full of grasslands brimming with myriad species of birds, dreamy wildflowers, coyotes to sing you to sleep at night… OK, maybe they actually keep you awake at night. But the point is that the Daniels have made a giant commitment to Hashem and Torah, and after years on the prairie with little community of the two-legged variety are ready to make some giant changes…
Breslev Israel: So you are getting ready for the big move? From a farm on South Dakota to New York is a major league move. You guys like to really go for it! When my husband and I moved to the city we were really excited about meeting other people who live by the Torah, the Torah classes, lunch and learns, and so forth. And by and large it has been great, but it isn’t without obstacles in terms of finding where we fit in – or I should say others figuring out where we fit in. What are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Daniels: I expect that there will be challenges… You’ll hear a story pop up about somebody that wasn’t nice to them, or whatever… This has been a long journey for us, that we’ve been heading in this direction. And you know what? When I stand before Hashem, when He asks me, “Well, what about you, and you did this wrong or you did that wrong,” you know, I can’t say, “Well, I did it because Moshe over here told me to or he mistreated me,” or whatever. Every one of us is going to be held accountable for what we do, and there’s no one else to blame it for.
There are no excuses… And we’re determined, no matter what, we’re going to treat people right, and we’re going to love people. I think there’s supposed to be love and we’re going to stop and care for them and do anything we can to be what we’re supposed to be.
Breslev Israel:That’s beautiful. Your kids are grown up, right? Did I hear that some are coming with you?
Mr. Daniels: Yeah, two of them are here. You asked me if there was anybody else up here. That’s one of the weird things: We were actually living in Michigan at one point, and I was doing work for a children’s hospital there, and I drove long distances to go there. We still had a house back here (in South Dakota) that we’ve had for a few years, and we felt like it was time to move back over here, and we couldn’t put our finger on it. We couldn’t make any sense of it. We knew we were being drawn towards the big city and community but we didn’t know where to go or what the right place was, you know, and how to really initiate this thing.
And so, it didn’t make any sense, because we were starving for fellowship where we were, we knew there wasn’t anything back here, but yet we had a home and it was paid for. We just thought, “Well, we’ll go back there (to South Dakota) and we’ll figure it all out”- We just felt like there was some reason we were being led back here, but we didn’t have a clue why.
My youngest daughter trains horses and does competition with them and things, and she went to some horse training programs and someone told her that there were some people very much like us that lived almost an hour to the west of us. And so, we ended up, we got their phone number and all that, and we called them, and, to be honest, we were a little leery… to go and meet these people.
But we decided and went ahead. And so we called and we ended up getting together. And they were good people. It was like a miracle straight from Hashem, because here were people who had been down the exact same road that we’ve been down. I mean, just so similar it’s just almost unbelievable. And they had moved out here into the middle of nowhere, and doing the exact same thing — trying to be observant as they can and seeking out Hashem and studying. And we went out there in the middle of nowhere, about an hour away to the west of us out there, and so we got to where we would take turns. You know, one weekend they would be over at our place and the next we’d be over at their place, and fellowship together…
Breslev Israel:That’s phenomenal!
Mr. Daniels: Yeah! I mean, who would have known, we couldn’t have known why we were moving back here. But the young man, their son, their oldest child, is two years older than my middle daughter. And this young man, he’s a lot like my son… I mean, very scholarly, very studied in Torah and a lot of things, way beyond what most people who aren’t Jewish do, you know?
And so, he called me up and wanted to talk to me. We met, and we talked and we prayed together for about six hours. This young man was interested in my daughter, so he told me he was very much willing, desired [to be engaged] just as my daughter had always said she wanted to do it, where there was no touch, you know, in the old-fashioned way. He basically courted her that way for eight or nine months and in September of this year my daughter and he got married. We had the whole feast and the whole works.
Breslev Israel: That’s so amazing to find each other like that. So lovely.
Mr. Daniels: It really is a miracle, because we had not a clue that they were out here anywhere. Nothing made sense about us moving back out here. We knew there was no fellowship, we knew there was nothing, and the funny thing is, my wife would tell you this, time after time I kept saying to her, “I feel it, too. We’re supposed to move out there. But what about my kids? They’ve got to be able to find mates. This seems like it’s a detour.” And it was all in Hashem’s plan the whole way.
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