Tours Around the Amish Community

The first three days of the rally are devoted to tours around the Amish countryside. On Monday we visited an Amish school – Pleasant Valley School – a cheese factory, a milk can factory, a woodcraft plant, a flour mill, and a leather shop. The school was the highlight of the day. These Amish children are a delight – clean, innocent, beautiful, intelligent, and very well behaved. There were 27 students in eight grades – actually seven grades because there was no one in the eighth grade. The teachers introduced the boys and girls (lots of Yoders, Millers, Troyers and Stutzmans). And we each introduced ourselves to them. Then they sang a song for us about Jesus before starting their work. It was obvious that every child was serious about learning. This was a new school – open only three years. The one large room was divided by a curtain – the older children on one side, the younger on the other. Each grade (5 or 6 kids) would go in turn up to a table in the front where the teacher led them through an arithmetic drill. Then they returned to their desks to work in a workbook on their own. The teachers were young girls, maybe 16 to 19 years old. There were about fifty of us Airstreamers, so we were divided into two groups. While one group was with the students, the other was downstairs asking questions of an older Amish couple about the school and about their faith.



The Amish don’t allow pictures, so the picture here is of the cheese factory we visited. A table full of gourds, squash, and pumpkins was for sale out front.