I know what it is like to be hurt to the core. Dry mouthed. No words inside of me. No songs to sing. No beauty to behold. I know what it is like to simply exist and any energy left inside of me is used up drawing another breath. Shattered. Broken. Defeated. Depressed. Feelings of […]
Behind Amish romance novels, tourist spots and “reality” TV shows stand real people, with longings and loves just like the rest of us. Every Amish and Mennonite woman has a story. What would it be like to be welcomed into their homes and share those stories over a cup of coffee? In the pages of […]
The savvy readers who follow this blog know that not all Amish groups are the same and that they are not to be mistaken for the Mennonites. There are about forty different Amish affiliations, from the largest and most familiar in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to groups that have only a few churches. But how did […]
I have an Amish friend in Pennsylvania whom I call from time to time when I need to check my facts about the Amish. Her name is Priscilla. She has three little girls and a husband who does housework, and she occasionally owns a cell phone. I say occasionally, because she gets a cell phone […]
For many Christian groups, especially those that came out of the revivalist or evangelical traditions, conversion points to a moment in time when an individual experiences a change of heart and chooses to follow Jesus. Someone giving a testimony might call this a “salvation experience.” The Amish have always believed that Christians experience salvation in […]
One of the reasons the Amish left Europe was because of the military environment of the sixteenth and seventeenth environments. Their reformist beliefs put them at odds with established churches, and their nonresistant, peace-seeking beliefs put them at odds with the government. For many, emigrating to Pennsylvania seemed like a fresh start that gave them […]
When the Amish arrived in Pennsylvania in Colonial times they likely did not look much different than the thousands of other German immigrants who came. They dreamed of leaving religious intolerance behind and carving farms out the Pennsylvania landscape to build self-sustaining lives where their faith could take form in everyday actions. The Amish have […]
In 1955, 26-year-old Jay Lehman opened a tiny hardware store in the village of Kidron, Ohio. But this wasn’t just any small business start-up. Jay wanted to provide goods that the local Amish people needed. “I was concerned that someday the Amish would not be able to maintain their simple ways of life because these […]
My son, who has always been a geography buff, has gotten me hooked on a History Channel show called “How the States Got Their Shapes.” (We’re watching on Netflix if you want to check it out.) One of the humorous features is when the host asks people who live in a state what they know […]
“I don’t know how to make ends meet here anymore. … I won’t be able to subsist here much longer.” That’s what one immigrant said about leaving Europe. Taxes, inflation, exorbitant rents, and the threat of war made leaving look better than staying. This was especially true in central Germany and Switzerland, where the Amish […]