On Season 5 of Return to Amish, Jeremiah and Carmela partner with Ada to sell her Amish Donuts at fairs. Ada insists that they hire Amish or Mennonites to help sell the donuts. Jeremiah balks at first but Ada is the one with the money, so he hires young Lowell, Shelly and Dawn, who have decided to leave their communities in order to get a taste of the English world. Both Lowell and Shelly were adopted by Mennonites when they were young, just like Return to Amish star Sabrina Burkholder. Sabrina made her TV debut on Breaking Amish in 2012. That year, she allowed the cameras to follow her when she met her biological father, Luis, in Wilmington, Delaware. Sabrina was adopted by a Mennonite couple when she was a baby and was told that she was found in a trashcan. On the car ride to see her father, she said, “My biggest hope is that we can start something that will last forever.” Her biggest fear was not being able to have a relationship with him. (See video clip below.)
On the Return to Amish Season 5 episode “Donut Season,” while the newbies hit the road and sell Ada’s Amish Donuts, Sabrina reacts to news of her father’s death. (Sabrina’s mother Linda passed away in 2005.) It’s been a difficult year for Sabrina. The 32-year-old mother of two recently revealed on Facebook that she had a relapse and nearly died of a heroin overdose. She was almost a year clean from heroin. She said while her heart stopped beating, she “saw” her biological mother and grandmother. She was given two doses of Narcan, the emergency medication designed to reverse the effects of a narcotic overdose. Return to Amish airs Sundays at 10 pm on TLC.
