Amish Country - Lancaster County Pennsylvania

Today we are in the Amish Country. We went on a tour that started around 10:45 this morning with a tour of an Amish home. Next we got on a chartered bus and toured through the Amish Country and learned many interesting things about the Amish culture. We saw several homes with lots of buggies parked out front. That meant they were having church services at that home. We saw at least 4 houses that were having church services. The Amish only go to church service every other week or 26 times a year. However, there is a church service each week so some Amish go one week and the others go another week. On the week that the Amish don't go to church they have prayers and bible study at home. The Amish families also rotate the church services at their homes and they also provide the lunch after the church service. After the tour we saw a short film about an Amish boy named Jacob Fisher who was approaching the age of making the decision of becoming baptized into the Amish faith or going the way of the world. The country side is so beautiful but I only got to take a couple of pictures. I don't have any pictures of the Amish people because they do not want to have their picture taken. So out of respect for the Amish I did not take any pictures of them.

I just had to take this picture below. It was in the Amish home that we toured. This is a pedal powered sewing machine. I am sure it did not actually work any more and the spool of thread that was on it was wooden and appeared to be very old. The pieces of paper to the right of the sewing machine were current ads for Bernina sewing machines that were powered by a battery. (The Amish do not have electricity) One of the machines looked very similar to one of my Bernina sewing machines. I only wish I had the time to go to one of those Bernina stores and sew on one of those battery powered sewing machines to see if I could tell the difference.

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Tomorrow morning Poppy is taking me back to the little town we were at today so I can go to several of the quilt shops I saw today. They are closed on Sunday and I have got to go to one of their quilt and fabric stores. There are also a couple of other really cute shops I saw that I want to go to. After we get through with the quilt stores we plan to start heading home.