Amish Country

We had a good meeting in Dover, PA yesterday at the Lighthouse Baptist Church. The church provided us with some great meals and a beautiful hotel room to stay in. Jeremy taught the teen Sunday School class in the morning, and then talked to the kids in Children’s Church for a few minutes. In the evening service, I played an offertory and Jeremy preached. It was a good day, and we enjoyed our time meeting the people of the church and getting to know them and the pastor.

On the way to the York, PA area on Saturday we took a little side trip to Lancaster County, PA. Growing up I always enjoyed going to shop and look around in Amish country, so I thought the boys would enjoy it also. There are a lot of attractions in the Lancaster area, but we mainly just took in the scenery. We did go to a pretzel factory and watch them make pretzels. We even got to try twisting some dough ourselves! That is definitely an art that has to be perfected.

Then we meandered through the country to Strasburg. On the way we crossed a covered bridge. I think that was the first time I had ever been on a covered bridge! At least, I don’t remember seeing one in person before. Just before we came over this hill, all we could see was the top of it, and the boys thought there was a house in the middle of the road! The Amish farms are beautiful in a simplistic way. Josiah and Jonathan liked to see the buggies, and we saw a lot of them, but I didn't get any good pictures of them. I didn't want to look too "touristy!"

I always wonder what it would be like to be living your normal life and have tourists drive by and stop to look at you. Even try to take your picture. I was amused by a brochure I read that advertised a place where you could dress up in Amish clothing and have your picture taken…sort of like those Old Time photos you can get. I wonder how the Amish feel about that?

In Strasburg, we went to the Choo Choo Barn. The kids really enjoyed this place! They have a 1700 square foot model railroad display. The details in the scenery were amazing. There were about 20 trains running, and many of the scenes had moving objects. Every so often the lights in the room would go out, and the streetlamps and lights in all the buildings would light up like it was night. My personal favorite was the house that caught on fire and started smoking. The fire engine would come around the corner with sirens blaring and little firemen came out and sprayed real water on the house to put out the “fire.” Josiah was so excited about it all that he kept saying the same things over and over again. He could hardly contain himself! To top it all off we walked through the Thomas the Tank Engine gift shop which had all things Thomas.

I loved the little Sprite machine on the platform

Their hammers and saws were really moving!

At the end of the day they were all worn out, but we had a fun day and enjoyed one of the last warm afternoons of the year.