The now husband-and-wife cut down the trees, built their house, planted vegetables, dug a pond, and made a water tank on their own. Their land was in the middle of a primeval forest and the couple had to do everything from hunt food to chop firewood. They moved to the town of Crossville in Tennessee a year after their wedding. and the couple then had a simple, intimate wedding party in February 2020. Throughout the same year, he visited Vietnam five more times before the couple held an engagement ceremony. John and Nhi welcomed David in December 2020. "I believe we will both be determined to build a happy ever after family because of that." "Both of us have been through painful events," he said. He decided to propose to her on his last day in Vietnam just before he returned to America. The fight made Nhi sad and embarrassed but John said he felt even closer to Nhi afterwards. When he first visited Nhi’s hometown in the southern Mekong Delta of Kien Giang, he accidentally saw an argument among Nhi’s family members. "John burst into tears when I said I agreed," she says. But John was the first man that made her feel safe and secure. Nhi never thought about marrying a foreigner, as she wanted to stay in Vietnam to take care of her parents and older brother. Sometime in early-2019, John confessed: "I thought of you as a friend, but as time passed by, I grew to have feelings for you. "We got so close we trusted each other with our deepest secrets, pains, and hurt," Nhi recalls. It was through her friendship with John that Nhi first learned about the Amish community.Īfter getting closer as friends, every time John traveled, he sent photos to Nhi. John found himself interested in what Nhi was doing as he had been supporting children in need through charity organizations for years. Nhi was working for a project helping poor children in Cambodia when they met. John, Nhi, and their first child David during the 2022 Tet Lunar New Year Festival. "We found many things in common as we talked, but we simply thought we had made friends," 35-year-old Nhi says.
John left his Amish community in 2018, before finding a job at a company, making friends, and traveling by airplane for the first time ever.Ī friend of his then introduced him to a Vietnamese woman named Nguyen Yen Nhi. "It’s a hard decision," he says, as quitting the Amish lifestyle means cutting off contact with one’s family, friends, and communities. John says that around 15% of people choose to quit the Amish life after their rumspringa period, including himself.
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They can freely use modern technological devices and enjoy the convenience brought by such things, including cars, films and gadgets.Īfter rumspringa, young Amish are free to choose whether or not they want to follow the old Amish rules or leave the community. They self-produce most of what they need in an attempt to ensure that external forces don’t create distance between themselves.īefore committing to this way of life, young Amish have a "rumspringa" period, during which they can explore and experience the outside world. They avoid using digital devices including TVs, computers and mobile phones, and they travel by horse-drawn carriages. According to John, 39, a resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there are currently over 300,000 Amish people pursuing their old-time lifestyle in the U.S.
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