English Join Amish To Move Montana Man’s Garage (Video)
Mike Kinsey’s garage was moved to its new location on Saturday – thanks to a volunteer team of Amish and non-Amish people. Nelson Troyer, the Amishman in charge of the move, gathered 70 Amish people, and put out the call for 70 more to join from the non-Amish community.
And enough responded to get the job done. They ended up with “more than 100” people. Nelson estimated that each had to lift about 90 pounds of weight. The group moved the building a relatively short distance, and moved it into place on its new foundation. You can see the report and footage below via KTVQ.
By the way, I erred a bit in my last post by suggesting this would be an all-Amish group. It later occurred that they might pull in outside help – since this is Montana, the Amish are fewer and further apart, and Nelson’s home community of Roberts is not a huge one.
After the move, they came together for prayer and to sing the hymn “How Great Thou Art“. An emotional Mike Kinsey thanked the group. “Not enough meaning to express my gratitude to each and every individual that came here today to help me.”
Mike Kinsey had originally thought to just ask Nelson to dismantle it and take the materials in exchange for his work. But I think Nelson’s Amish instincts wouldn’t let him ever consider that: “There’s no way in my mind that I can tear down that nice building.” The dramatic video below shows what Mike lost in the 2022 flood. The river claims his home, which he had built by hand way back in 1977.
Saving his garage is a big step to helping Kinsey stay on his place, which he has been trying to do, living in a mobile home as he seeks to rebuild. So this is yet another great example of an Amish building move and I’m glad the Q2 news team was there to capture it.
This one’s a bit different than ones we’ve seen before, in that it brought in a lot of non-Amish people as well. Three cheers to these volunteers, and to Nelson Troyer (and I know he’s not looking for praise) for getting this together.
Just think if the whole country could cooperate like this what a better country and a stronger country we could be. At one time you knew your neighbors and could count on their help today everybody has a tall privacy fence around their yard and you never see anyone.
The farthest west Amish settlements at this point are Montana. I’ve passed them in travel. Not obvious unless you are aware. Moving buildings by manpower alone is something they are well experienced in. I agree it would have been wasteful to dismantle that pretty building. Note there is an African American man in the group lifting. This video warms my heart. There is something to be said for People Power ️ the Amish are on track to reach one million in north america in the not too distant future. They are becoming more well known to their surrounding communities. The reason for their general separateness in north america was that they were killed, imprisoned, and property confiscated in Europe for not assimilating, not following state mandated religion, refusing the draft/pacifist, etc. If they don’t face the same treatment here, you can see they are community oriented. Hutterites will also help non-anabaptist neighbors in things like fires and actually they’ve gotten pretty good at scuba looking for drowning victims in bodies of water, of all things.
Park City is only about 870 people, but I doubt they had much trouble finding recruits. This is Montana, after all.