Almost immediately, the devastated Amish community sought to forgive the deceased perpetrator, and to reach out with compassion to the family of Mr. Roberts. \u00a0As reported by NPR<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cSeveral families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer\u2019s family.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/em>The Amish later donated money to his widow and children.<\/p>\n In a further twist\u2013like the old idea\u00a0of \u201cpaying it forward\u201d\u2013that love and embrace\u00a0has spread. Terri Roberts, the mother of Mr. Roberts, has in turn helped\u00a0those whom her son victimized. She has become a part time caretaker of an Amish girl named Rosanna, who was neurologically devastated by a gunshot wound to the head. \u00a0(As reported in New York Daily News<\/a>).<\/p>\n This \u201cAmish grace\u201d shocked the nation almost as much as the horrific crime out of which it manifested. \u00a0Though many still struggle at times, the Amish families were able to endure thanks to their strong community and the deep faith that permeates their day-to-day lives. \u00a0 In this, they are exemplars to all of us.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ten years ago, on an October day in Nickel Mines, PA, a man named Charles Roberts who was \u201cangry at life and angry with God\u201d according to accounts at the time, crept into a one room schoolhouse. \u00a0He took ten\u00a0girls hostage, and then shot them, before killing himself. \u00a0Five of them died, and the rest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[597,596,172,598,599],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational-stories","tag-amish-grace","tag-amish","tag-forgiveness","tag-nickel-mines-shooting","tag-terri-roberts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}