Sam is the first born, and was born while we were ministering in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Teen Challenge Center.  He was so small that he didn't even fill one cushion on a the couch in the living room in the teen girls's residence.  In spite of that we are blessed to read in Luke 2:23, "As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that openeth the womb shallbe called holy to the Lord."  This then applies to Sam as well as to his son Ethan who is Sam's firstborn son.

Beverly and I prayed and asked the Lord to give us a name for our new baby.  Beverly felt that God told her Samuel David, and I 

thought the Lord told me Samuel Adam, so we decided to name him Samuel Adam David Shaffer. We prayed that God would give us a 

boy first so that if he had sisters he would be there to protect them.  God answered our prayer, and we found out that his name means "beloved man asked from God."  After that we determined that we would give all our children sentence names with God in them in 

some way or another, and so we did.

When we found out Beverly was pregnant we didn't have any kind of insurance to cover Sam's birth so we began to pray that God 

would meet that need through whatever way he saw fit.  We found out that we were in the only county in the entire state of Indiana that 

had medical assistance for child birth available for people whose income qualified them for help.  I don't know if that has expanded to the other counties since, but at that time we just happened to be in the only country that had it.  We felt that the Lord had put us in that 

county for that very reason, so we got the financial help we needed and Sam was born.  

The staff, the girl students and the boy students really loved Sam and they all wanted to hold him and rock him and carry him around.  

If you look at the boys and girls pictures in the Indianapolis TC Page you will see that could have been quite a problem, but we kept it 

to a minimum with so many people there.

Sam traveled with us in ministry until 1983 when we moved to Sunbury and stayed there until called back into ministry in 1989.  During that time Sam grew in physical stature, in spiritual stature and in favor with God and man. When we were called to minister at Teen Challenge, we stayed in our house in Sunbury and traveled back and forth to the campus.  When Sam was 14 years old the ministry there closed down, and then Sam continued on through high school at Shikellamy High School in Sunbury.  

Sam graduated high school and then graduated with a degree from Bloomsburg University in our local area about a half hour or so 

from home.  There he met Emily, who was not a Christian at the time, and he read the Bible to her and played Christian music for her.  

It wasn't too long before Emily came to know Jesus as her Savior and Lord, and she was filled with joy then and seems to radiate 

peace whenever we see her.  



Sam and Emily both graduated from Bloomsburg and then got married and now have two very special sons, Ethan and Joshua Shaffer and a beautiful daughter Ellie Adalyn.  They are finding out how much fun parenting is, and are learning a lot from Ethan and Joshua 

and Ellie.  



I am sure that if you asked them they would tell you that they give all the glory, honor and praise to the Lord for saving them and 

making them the blessed family that they are. Nobody has ever said anything bad about them that I know of, but instead they are honored by those who know them and love them. They have made a lot of friends over the years.