Salvation Coming to the Amish

Now that we live close to Amish neighborhoods.  I saw a newspaper article advertising "Steve and Jake Lapp", Amish brothers sharing how they were excommunicated by leaders of the Old Order Amish.  That's what happened to my parents, so of course I was interested.  They continue to dress like the Amish, live in RV's and travel across the United States, speaking and giving Seminars.

After the service closed they wanted to pray for the sick "by laying on hands".  Wonderful!  The leader said he broke his pelvis after falling out of a barn, he was miraculously healed by the power of God and became a born-again Christian. 

My family became born-again Christians after I was prayed for.  I fell at school and injured my leg,  it was black and blue, swollen and painful.  Mrs. Clark was visiting our home at the time and felt that God wanted her to pray for me.  The first time she prayed for me, nothing happened, the second time she visited, she felt led by God to lead me in the "sinner's prayer".  I repeated the prayer she ask me to pray.  The next morning I was pain free!  I didn't understand being born-again. 

God started working in my life and my parents.  After a year of prayer and God speaking to my parents they decided to be water baptized by immersion.  My mom experienced healing, my dad was smoker and Mrs. Clark asked him to seek God, God came to my dad in a dream and he quit smoking and became born again.  My family started attending a spirit filled church and were excommunicated and shunned!  I realize now that this must have been a hard time in my parents lives, but to experience God's peace and forgiveness of sin is wonderful.  Knowing that Jesus died on the cross to set us free from sin in the best Christmas message ever!

Looking back on this time of our lives I am so blessed that the Holy Spirit through the Word of God started speaking to us!  According to God's Word I have eternal life!  To have the peace of God is so wonderful!  During the Christmas season this is a time to reflection and blessed that God sent his son Jesus to be born of a virgin Mary.  This is only the beginning!  God is always speaking and working in our lives.  We need to take the time to listen to hear the voice of God!

We have New Order Amish living in our neighborhood.  They have electricity, farm with tractors.  When driving past their homes it looks like any home.  They dress plain and use horse and buggy to go to church.  They have a church building to use for their services.  They preach the salvation message! 

Thanksgiving

Now that I am living in Pennsylvania, much closer to my siblings I try to remember to look at Amish when I see them out shopping.  Just the other day when I was grocery shopping, I saw a lady that looked familiar so I got closer and said "hello", here it was one of my older sisters! 

Several years ago when visiting this area, when shopping in one of the "big box stores", I heard a laugh that sounded familiar so I went to the aisle I thought I heard the laugh, yes, it was another of my sisters!  It was so nice to meet up with her too!

Growing up Amish I didn't get to shop very often.  Our family was large and I think my mom wanted the time alone when ever she could get it.  Very few times in my growing up years did I get to shop or go out with my mom.  It was always specaial whenever I got to go to town!

Now that I drive a car its not a big deal to go to town.  Plus in the winter the car is nice and warm!  Compared to the buggy and horse, even though they close the buggy up, its still cold!!  They have a wool lap blanket they cover there legs while traveling.  We were always squashed into the back seat going to church, I don't remember the cold.

The neighborhood I live in now has "New Order Amish".  They use tractors for farming.  The houses and barns have electric so driving past the farm, you can't tell the Amish from the English.  They use horse and buggies to drive to church on Sundays.  They ladies dress plain and wear a little white cap.  Last summer a lady ask me why I didn't dress plain, even though she assured me she didn't believe her clothes took her to heaven. 

Thanksgiving Season 2013

We have been living in our new home for about 2 years.  I still love the life that comes with living here.  The house is off the main road, the lane keeps going on and on!  Several people trying to find us have commented on the long lane.  In fact it used to be a County Road.  They gave Grandpa Homer a grader to keep the lane up and he named the lane Homer Lane.

Our garden did well and our freezer is full and the cupboard is filled with jars.  I bought a bushel of peaches from neighbors and canned them.  I froze some for cobblers, etc.

Growing up all of our meals were cooked from "scratch".  So that's how I learned to cook.  When we retired I decided I could cook our meals instead of eating our meals in restaurants.  This saves us money and the food is better for us too.  It takes some doing to not overeat!

The orchard from the farm produces every other year and this was the year we had/have apples.  We started with Transparent Apples this summer.  I asked Josh to pick them when he visited and I made apple pandowdy from them and applesauce too.  This fall the Spy's ripened and I froze several pies and made several other apple dishes.  The canned applesauce is also very good!   I dried apples too!  The trees still have apples on them, I wish I could climb trees like I used to when growing up!  Well, not really but I loved climbing trees and that's where the apples are still hanging!

Every year my goal has been to blog more often.  Maybe this will be the year that it will happen.

Christmas 2012 Wish List

Here is my latest Wish List for family.  

2012 Christmas/Birthday/Holiday List - Margaret


Panasonic SD-RD250 Automatic Bread Maker with Fruit/Nut Dispenser
(I would think a regular bread machine would work too)

Amazon Gift Certificate  - Kindle Books
(Love my Kindle!!!)

Popcorn popper   (I keep thinking if I had an airless popper it would be healthier?)






Gardening shoes/gloves/gloves
Anything related to gardening

Lilac bush - spring??

Summer of 2012

So here are some of the vegetables I grew in the garden this summer.  I froze beans, extra squash and zucchini.  I made pickles that keep in the fridge, plus we bought some fruit and I canned applesauce and peaches.  I canned tomatoes and also made blackberry jam.

I am looking forward to eating the stuff in the freezer and what I canned this winter.  It will give me a clue what we like and don't like.  I have both strawberry plants and blueberry bushes in the garden.  I didn't plan to well but it should work out OK.  The strawberry plants are on the east side of the garden and the blueberry bushes are on the west side of the garden.  So the tractor will need to be careful to not dig or cover them but it will limit garden space for the next several years until we move the strawberry plants.  I am thinking both will need to be covered from animals and birds.

My garden experience this summer has been that I need to plant enough for both us and the animals.  When we dug up the sweet potatoes last week we found baby mice.  I noticed the tops of the sweet potatoes were eaten.  So then we found the mice . . .  yes, we let them live.

We hosted my family reunion this summer.  We actually need to call it a "gathering" for the Amish.  We cleaned up the garage and put the food, etc in the garage.  We had flies, but food shouldn't sit out for hours in the summer, so this made sure the food was put away after we ate.  We didn't have home made ice cream this summer, none of the younger people came and the older ones decided they didn't want to crank the freezer.  The ladies helped get the food put away and stuff washed up.  

The ladies played cards most of the afternoon and others played washers.  This takes 2 teams of people.  I practiced several throws and discovered I could hit the holes, so I played washers.
 

The Amish come early and stay late!  Since Ed and I are early risers, we were dressed and ready for company!  The day wasn't too hot which would have been hard to sit on the patio.  We have seats on the screen porch and people could sit whereever they wanted.  Everyone sat in the garage for the most part.  I got benches from the Amish.  I stopped in at my brother Emanuel's place to ask if we could use benches from him.  We had extra chairs to move around and the benches were mobile too.  Steve, my younger brother brought them and took them home that night.

All in all we had nice weather for the day.  Since we still had mounds of dirt it was nice that not many small children came.  One of my great-nephews sat on top of the stone wall with his feet dangling down the steep side so I called his mother!

I am so thankful for our large family and that we have these gatherings several times a year!  God has been good!

2012 Garden

I have a garden! I planted peas, lettuce and onions today! I am excited! It finally happened! Paul, my brother-in-law plowed the plot several weeks ago then came and disk the garden yesterday, and it looked pretty good after he went over it several times. This plot hasn't been used for at least ten years! I didn't take the top layer off so the dirt is full of roots and what not. Our kind neighbor Forest came soon after Paul left with a rotor tiller on his tractor! He went over the ground at least three times, so the dirt is pulverized! I plan to fill the garden space this summer, planting tomatoes, several kinds of peppers, pickles, squash, carrots, more onions, more lettuce and maybe even sweet corn. We'll find out if the wild animals will stay out of the garden! Paul's dog and that's her name too, has been coming to our farm for several days and now we don't see any ground hogs. Yeah! The empty house next door had several living under the front porch. It was Sunday, our dogs daily entertainment.

I found the farm has several big patches of daffodil along with several types! I am getting excited to get our water feature completed along with the stone wall rebuilt, get our patio poured, etc. Our farm house has ivy that I want to pot and let it creep over the stone. It will help soften the appearance of the stone.



I am hosting "Sister's Day" next Saturday, so they will get to see the house, several for the first time. Well, we only moved in several months ago! We are pretty much unpacked, the boxes are out of the farm house where we stored the stuff we moved out of our Sheboygan home. Yeah!

Its February already! I keep saying I thought I would blog more often! We are getting settled in our new home. We started moving stuff to the farm around 3 years ago so we have all those boxes to unpack. We put up some Christmas decorations this year. It was fun to put up a Christmas tree again after all these years! The stuff we didn't use this year we moved and put in the attic.

Our boxes of books are open and put on the shelves we had built for that purpose. They are deep in both rooms so several layers of books can be stacked. I continue to be amazed at how much the book cases can handle. Thank God for Josh; while visiting over Christmas he organized the bookcase so it looks wonderful. We keep finding stuff and are able to find a place for it. Otherwise we plan to sell what we can't use. Thank God for flea markets!

I need to start painting again. Maybe we'll have some sunny days coming up in March. I want to be done giving all the trim work its paint. at this time I don't plan to change any wall colors. The bathrooms are white . . . so maybe after this summer I'll have some fresh inspiration and come up with a color to paint them. They need another coat of paint, so we might as well wait and see if we want to keep them this color of white.

Now that hunting season is over we are seeing deer again. Sunday, our dog starts to bark, but after dark we can't see anything. When we walk to the mail box in the morning I see deer tracks out and about so she must have been barking at them.

Both Ed and I are so totally enjoying living out here on the farm! I didn't know how this would play itself out but so far its really been fun. We still don't have any curtains up . . . that has really been nice. I know the sun will start shining before I am ready to get up so I am thinking about some window coverings. When summer is in full swing our dining room will get hot so we will need to put something over those windows too.

Our children gave us this Homer Lane address for Christmas. We will hang it on our house around the front door somewhere. So cool!