Amish Blog.
We decided to do the 4 hour Amish thing. What it included was a 45 min. tour of a 9 room Amish house, very interesting, you got to see how they live without electricity because they have stoves, ovens, refrigerators ect, you learned about their clothing, every day stuff and Sunday wear. The different hats and hair covers, the colors they must be and what age the colors change.
We also saw a 30 minute virtual film on an Amish boy trying to decide if he was going to be baptized Amish or live in our world. Every child, boy or girl, must make that decision after, I believe they are done with school. School, by the way, only goes to the 8th grade, then you are done, the Amish don’t believe anymore schooling is needed. The law here in Pennsylvania says that children must be in school until the age of 16 so in the 8th grade they are normally age 14 so the last years of schooling (until they are 16) is vocational, which means they work in the fields. They do have to go to school for 3 hours every Saturday with an Amish school teacher, which, by the way, only has the education of an 8th grader, very interesting. The kids can own cars, when of age, and do everything the outside world does, if they don’t decide to become Amish they are not shunned from the family, but of course if they don’t become Amish they normally leave. 5% of the children do leave by the way. If they decide to stay with the Amish way of life then they are baptized but if they should decide to leave after that then they will be shunned from the family.
We thought the Mennonite’s broke away from the Amish but it was the other way around. They were still as one back in the 1600’s but in 1690 the Amish became to be because they thought the Mennonite’s were getting to modern, how they hell do you get modern in 1690? Anyway, a few differences between the 2 groups are Mennonites have cars, churches, electricity, ect didn’t do any touring of Mennonite’s so can’t say too much about them.
Also on our tour was a bus ride for 2 hours thru the Amish, Mennonite, and our communities. Can’t just say Amish communities because they live, out here, among everyone the only way to tell if it is an Amish house is they have no wires for electricity. Some of the houses have what looks like an outhouse on the property but that is where they have their telephones. They at one time were allowed to have phones in the houses but the bishops found out that they were spending too much time on the phones then heard that people were gossiping and all phones where then banned from homes. Not every family has a phone some of them just share with their neighbors. While on the bus we passed a farm that had a bunch of carriages and all the horses were under a tent. Well, it was an Amish wedding going on, carriages are put to one side and the horses go under cover, so nice to see them treated well. Anyway, the Amish only have weddings on Tuesday and Thursday’s and only at the end of October thru the end of December. That is the off season time for farming so that’s the only time they are allowed. The wedding night is spent with the bride’s family then after that they either move into the bride’s or groom’s family’s house. There is no honeymoon and they stay until spring then they can move into their own home which they have either built or purchased and start their own farming of their fields. Wedding gifts are received by the bride and groom when they visit the people’s homes on weekends and each visit includes a meal. They said some of the Amish newlyweds will visit 3 to 4 homes each Saturday and Sunday to receive their gifts, but remember they have to eat a full meal each time; they probably start out fat then all the work in the fields they lose it all. Once married the men have to grow beards, that’s how you know a man is married, women there are no way of knowing.
I could go on and on but I’ll just give a few more highlights. Amish do pay taxes and believe in all medical care, they just don’t pay any Social Security Taxes and have signed their rights away to ever receive any Social Security payments. On the medical stuff they have no medical insurance so when they need medical care, doctor’s check-ups, surgery, anything they just pay cash. Either they pay it or their congregation helps them pay it. The Amish don’t believe in a church so their religionist meetings are held every other week in a family’s house. Each community consists of like 30 families but they share the bishops. The bishops have church every week because they have to keep switching off the communities. The services last about 3 hours long and they are held at a different house so the family that hosts the service that day then has to feed everyone. I forgot to mention each family has a minimum of 7 kids so that’s a lot of people at one house, good thing the communities are only 30 families. What the host ends up doing is clearing out rooms and then they bring in the benches to line up in each room, girls on one side men on the other, they also have like 3 bishops that come to the houses, I guess one for each room.
The Amish school teacher receives $1.00 a day per student; there are only 20 to 30 students, at the most, in the one room school thru the 8th grade. There are many Amish schools around because the Amish don’t believe a child should have to travel more then a mile away from home. Amish can ride scooters, no bikes, because they believe you can’t get to far away from home on a scooter.
I could go on and on, very interesting to me, a different culture living among us but living so simple and not stressed, how welcome would that be.