This story will make you do a double-take. At least, it did me. Last month, Amish in a community in Eaton County, Michigan invited a teenage social media preacher to deliver a sermon to their community. He ended up preaching to a group of over 100 people, from the Amish and other backgrounds. When I saw this story, I had the obvious questions. Who are…
Following the wildfire which hit the Amish in the “middle of nowhere”, a non-Amish father and son found they could relate to the community’s loss. And that motivated them to donate their time, energy and resources to helping out one particularly hard-hit Amish family in Cherry County, Nebraska. From News Channel Nebraska: KILGORE, Neb. – Wildfires across Nebraska’s Sandhills are leaving many ranchers scrambling to…
Two weeks after a devastating fire that wiped out a beloved Idaho Amish market, there is some good news. As expected, the community has rallied behind the Amish owners, the Paul Miller family. East Idaho News reports on the cleanup efforts, and shares some words from Paul and the Baker Country Market in Lemhi County. Cleanup began the very next day: Paul Miller owned the…
I found this story both surprising and not surprising. It was surprising to me in that I’d never heard of a deer stand for disabled hunters (though granted, I’m not a hunter myself, and it sounds like a good idea). It’s not surprising in that a) many Amish people love hunting, and b) many Amish people are creative and innovative in coming up with solutions…
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a good “Amish fun in the snow” video. So it seems apt that the arrival of the Big Winter Storm of 2026 would also bring us a good Amish-buggy-doing-snow-donuts video (at end of post). The person who filmed this, Casey Jones Springer, captioned it simply “Only in Tennessee”. While that’s not technically accurate (for instance, here’s a buggy snow…
This remarkable article caught my eye this week. Sue Watson, writing for the South Reporter, recalls the cleanup efforts following a devastating tornado strike in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She looks back on the 10th anniversary of the event, which happened in December of 2015 – noting the helping hand extended by Amish and Mennonite volunteers from Pennsylvania. She shares two striking photos as well. We’ve…
This month, the only mobile meat canner in the world is making a stop in Goshen, Indiana – an area with a large Amish and Mennonite population. It’s there to be used in a big charity effort which sees hundreds of volunteers pitch in to can chicken meat, destined for locations around the world where meat is hard to come by. This is a Mennonite…
Save & Serve is a special kind of store – a nonprofit operation whose earnings are directed to benefit various outreach projects, supporting the Mennonite Central Committee’s mission. Based in Millersburg, Ohio, it’s a thrift shop selling a “curated selection of gently-used items”, according to its website. Founded in the mid-1970s, they’ve been at it for over half a century now. Periodically, Save & Serve…
West Virginia has been a “hotspot” Amish state for some time now. Since 2017, a dozen new Amish communities have arisen in the Mountain State. One of them is in Monroe County, WV. The county, in fact, has two very small communities. In one of them, an Amish entrepreneur named Jeff Miller and his family have established a new store – Appalachian Country Store –…
The Amish and Mennonite outreach to hurricane victims in North Carolina has been well-documented in the media. We’ve looked at several examples here – such as their work in Bat Cave, NC, or their efforts in the heavily-damaged tourist town of Chimney Rock. Plain groups have been an essential part of a wider effort (not to ignore the many contributions of non-Plain volunteers) to help…