What is funny to me about the fact we got placed with the Siler's, is that the patriarch of their family had specifically encouraged our mother in her efforts to beat the crap out of her children. Plymouth Brethren typically don't appoint a pastor to a congregation, instead affirming "elders" and "deacons", so he couldn't be a pastor, but in effect, he was as close as he could be to one, for his denomination. He would lead "bible studies", he would lead sermons, he would lead youth group, he would lead marriage counseling, pre-marital counseling, and child training counseling, as well as seminars based on these topics and others. My mother reached out to him, complaining about her horribly behaved children, although I have no idea what examples she gave him, because we were so scared of her, we would do everything in our power not to piss her off. I think she just wanted attention, especially from a "powerful" male figure. So once a week for what felt like months, probably in the fall of '05, us siblings, which was all of us except my oldest brother who had left the household to live on his own a few years prior, would sit in the living room of the Siler family and have the patriarch of the family tell us we were terrible disrespectful children who could understand nothing but physical punishment. "Spare the rod, spoil the child". We watched hours and hours of footage, excerpts from some seminar, of this dumbass Mennonite saying the same thing over and over, "your kids won't be harmed, the butt is designed for spanking, neglecting your duty as a parent to discipline your child is doing a disservice to society, and is disobedient to 'god'".

And some months later, he was our foster father. I'm laughing as I'm typing this because it is so ridiculous to me. We did his children some good, because of course, part of becoming foster parents, which they had not been before we needed placement, meant they had to undergo training, where they learned that they couldn't use physical punishment on foster children at all. Which meant shortly after we got placed with them, our foster parents stopped using physical punishment on their biological children as well. I can remember a few incidents where they did spank their biological children. But within a year or so, they moved on from the practice.

We got placed with them at my second oldest sister's request, after Tracy, my third oldest sister and the one closest in age to me, called Child Protective Services. Kayla had formed a friendship with Naomi, the third oldest Siler sibling, and close enough in age to relate to some circumstances. 

After our father "passed", and a frustrating attempt to have him stay with his family and frequent visits from physical therapists, he was admitted to an assisted living facility. It was around this time that his stepfather passed. I do not know what our household survived off of as far as income after these occurrences. As many children as could walk around ended up taking paper routes in various area towns, Ontario, Cashton, Clifton, Kendall, Wilton, Hustler, and of course La Farge. The income generated was used for the household. Every time a lease was up on the house that was being rented, we moved. The next spot was nearly across from Dorset Ridge Cemetery, where King Rd meets Locust Ave. The farmhouse (22595 King Rd) was on the same property as a dairy operation, which the owner, a Mr. Cook, would frequent. He would leave his dead cows to rot and bloat and in some cases, to subsequently explode, in the driveway.

The next place was my personal favorite of any place I lived in my adolescence, S2498a Elm Ave, Forest, WI, off of County Road P, south of Warner Creek, northwest of White City. This place was an old farmhouse, with a manual old style water pump on-site, surrounded by acres of woods, an old cow pasture no longer in use, both of which we were free to roam and would purposely get lost in. There was a big old barn on the property, and several smaller sheds and a chicken coop. We kept goats, a few dogs, English shepherds, a bunch of chickens, and several cats were allowed to do their thing, maybe a little too much, as they proceeded to breed like rabbits, another species of animal which we kept several of.

It was at this house that the family lived at when they first started attending meetings of the Open branch of the Plymouth Brethren denomination, Grace and Truth Bible Chapel in Westby. This would have been 2004. This is where we met our future foster family.

The Silers had never fostered children before, and they were generally busy with the local bible camp, the same camp that owned the house the Siler family was living in at the time, which the head of said family was also the executive director of and had quite a bit of responsibility as he answered to the board for every good and less than stellar occurrence that transpired on the property. Looking back, I’m not even sure if he could even host foster children independently, that is, without having authorization from the camp his house was on and which he acted in a leadership capacity for.

However it happened, that’s what happened. Again, the situation was mucked up by the fact that Saunnia had beforehand gone to the Silers for ‘discipline counseling’, leading our future foster father to believe us children were rebellious and extraordinarily disobedient, when in fact, we were so traumatized and so withheld from social and public life and indeed, of even leaving the four walls of Saunnia’s household even to walk around outside, as to be virtually incapable of doing any rebellious or disobedient acts of any significance. It should have been obvious from our frail frames and shy demeanor that there was a whole heck of a lot more going on in that situation, but he encouraged Saunnia to physically strike children, who were all well into their verbal communication stage, as the main method of “discipline”.

The Vernon County Judge who presided over the ensuing case was already infamous for light sentences concerning people from extremist religious groups, as 2 years earlier he had given the local Amish pedophile, rapist, and sexual predator Johnny Byler little more than a slap on the wrist, and in essence, might as well have given him a pat on the back as he left the courthouse. Judge Michael Rosborough (who has since retired thankfully) basically sentenced Saunnia to a set number of hours of therapy and counseling, allowing her to choose her own therapist/counselor, and then allowing her to have her children back in her home.

The two youngest eventually moved back in with Saunnia as they had struggled to get along with our foster father, who did not fully believe we needed to be in fostercare and had unfortunately been very well misled to believe the fabrications our mother had told him earlier. It should be noted again, the Siler family had zero experience with the foster care system.

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If someone says they believe it when a woman tells them she is a "pregnant virgin", you have every right to call both of those people stupid. If they say that the woman in question is the mother of 'god', I would recommend no further interaction, or at least as little as you can help it. We know humans are not parthogenetic. If your fiance were to tell you she was pregnant, and you hadn't had sex with her, you would believe she cheated, or was assaulted. You might even give her the benefit of the doubt, after she tells you 'god' got her pregnant, that she doesn't remember being penetrated by a male sexual organ, perhaps she was raped, and the event was so traumatizing for her that she effectively blocked it out. In the case of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, it is accepted by historians, biblical scholars, and such that Mary was between the age of 12 and 16 when she became pregnant with Jesus. A non-consensual sexual interaction of violent means could very well be to blame for producing such an effect in the young woman. In any case, in the 21st century, this story, that of a virgin birth, should be put to rest. We know better. The embellishments that stem from such a story are then built off of a lie, Jesus Christ can not save you from anything. Stick with reality, it will do more good than continuing to kick this can down the road and hope for some rapture. There are idiots trying to reproduce 'prophecy' from the bible and induce the 'end times'. Some of these people are involved in American government. These people should be given what they believe to be the nuclear codes, to reset humanity as they so desperately desire, but which instead release a poison that kills the person who pressed the 'button', and them alone. It's like George Harrison said, although I don't fully agree with the sentiment, "If everyone who had a gun just shot themselves there wouldn't be a problem". Thanks George.

If on the other hand, someone is so steeped in this way of thinking, that sticking to their Christian milieu actually does make them a better person, then "do you". "God" help us all.

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The church we attended had those "Left Behind" books on the same shelf in the sanctuary with the hymnals and bibles. We watched the movies in youth group, and the leaders presented it as if it was factual, verbatim, how the "end times" were going to go. I thought this was all nuts, but it left an impression. Those books, and the 1984 TV movie "Nadia" about the gymnast, are the only reference points I had for "Romania" until I took that DNA test. In the "Left Behind" films, the anti-christ figure is Romanian. His father is named Sorin. You don't realize until you have some connection, or some reason to think from the side of the "other", but this was racist as all hell to represent those characters in that fashion. I'm certain the church my family attended is not the only one this is true of, especially not in the area.

And while the elders of this church in particular rarely touched on the topic of Catholicism, guest pastors would come in and tell us that Catholics are all going to hell. This is hilarious to me, because Catholicism is the funnel through which the Protestants received Christianity. Until the Reformation 500 years ago, in short everyone west of Austria was Catholic. 

This sentiment, that Catholics aren't even true Christians, was something I heard more often from the rotating cast of churches that my biological parents attended. The one thing I'll say, at least the Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and Protestant churches allow their clergy to marry.