Return to Amish ...... What?

  Last night's episode of Return to Amish was so ridiculous that I'm still trying to decide if I want to laugh or scream. The story lines they come up with might be okay if it happened in real life, but all the stupid things they get the cast to do has ex-Amish everywhere laughing and somewhat offended at the unreal portrayal of Amish life. I can't see how the actors even maintain a straight face at some of the things they are trying to sell as reality.

   I won't bother dissecting everything, but a few were so blatantly fake that I feel like talking about it.

   In the scene where Chester, Mary, and Katie Ann were going to church to make a confession and hopefully start being accepted again was all kinds of fake. They did choose to wear their Sunday clothes, but Mary and Katie Ann didn't wear a bonnet over their prayer coverings. Amish women wouldn't even dream of going to church with out one. Second if it is cold enough to need a coat to go to church Amish women will wear a shawl, unless it's really cold and then they'll wear a coat, but still wear a shawl over it.

 They arrived at "church" and went into the house. They needed some other people there, but uh-oh they weren't wearing the clothes the Amish in Punxsutawney wear. The voices from inside the house amused me greatly. It was no where near like an Amish church service, and the "confession" part also not at all like an Amish church confession.

  The Amish never welcome people by name at a church service, confessions have the bishop informing everyone what the sin was and then the offender has to go outside while the rest of the church votes which of the three levels of confessions will have to be made. Mary was questioning if she can continue seeing her children, another sign this was not a church service. She would not have been able to say anything except repeating a certain confession after the bishop.

   I could point out more, but I'm really hoping people are realizing if they want to learn anything about the Amish, that this show has almost zero reality.

Silence

The house seems too quiet, everyone is talking in hushed tones and even moving about more quietly. After all these years I have discovered the reason behind our noisy family must be because the children have a noisy mother. You see, I have lost the ability to speak. I can whisper, but only when absolutely necessary.

I have had trouble with a growth of sorts in my throat for a long time already, but was putting off getting serious about getting help for it. Lately it has been getting much worse, so bad in fact I was having trouble swallowing food, almost every bite had to be washed down with water and sometimes that wasn't even working.

For the next month I'll be not using my voice, anyone that knows what a chatterbox I am knows how difficult this is looking to me. No talking, no singing, no laughing out loud. I never realized just how much I did of all three until that was taken from me.

I'm hoping by the end of the month things will be getting better and I won't have to do much more serious treatment. Surgery scares me, and I don't want to go that route unless I have to.

Wednesday Hodgepodge

1. What summer activity most takes you back to your own childhood?

Working in a garden takes me back more than about any other summer activity. Summer used to be extremely busy putting up a year's supply of food.

2. What's your favorite summer smell?

Though I can't smell, I absolutely love the air here after a rain if I breathe deeply I can taste it, sweet and so refreshing.

3. It's beach season in the US of A...so how do you feel about sand?

Sand, eh....... I actually enjoyed our visit to the beach last year, and will probably enjoy it again this year, but I would prefer other vacation destinations.

4. Sun tea, SunChips, sunflower seeds, Capri Sun, Sunny Delight, Sun-Maid raisins, sun-dried tomatoes...your favorite food or beverage with sun in its name?

Let's go through the list. Tea, no thanks. Sunflower seeds I enjoy especially when roasted like we used to while I was growing up. It's been years though since I last had any. Capri Sun and Sunny Delight, not a fan of either. Sun-Maid raisins, only if they are chocolate covered. Never had sun dried tomatoes. That leaves Sun Chips, it just happens that I love them, but only get to enjoy them when we travel.

5. What's your favorite way to cool off on a hot summer day?

My preferred method of cooling off on a hot day is relaxing in a nice air conditioned house with some ice cold lemonade. The children how ever would prefer to go swimming. We have friends with a nice pool that we can use when ever we like. We visited it last week, everyone was having fun until a chipmunk decided to join the activities and drowned. The speed in which the girls left the pool when that happened was almost comical.

6. Share a favorite song with the word sun or sunshine in it's title.

Walking in Sunlight

7. Tell us about a time you had an exceedingly good or truly awful customer service experience. If it was awful, did you report it? Ever go back there again?

A local business recently provided truly awful customer service, we didn't bother reporting it, mostly because it was an Amish business and we didn't want them to get in trouble for dealing with someone ex-Amish. As long as they don't recognize us, we get to do business with them, but after our last experience it might not be such a bad thing if we couldn't.

8.  Insert your own random thought here. 

I love seeing things that grow during the summer.

Warnings

Amish sermons could often be peppered with dire warnings of what happens to those who choose to leave the Amish, or awful things that happened to rebellious youth. Where these horror stories originated I have no idea, but they did what the preachers wanted them to do, strike fear into anyone that was listening.

There was a family that decided to leave the Amish, as the woman was busy packing boxes she happened to look out the window and noticed something odd in the graveyard across the road. She dropped everything and went to investigate, as she got closer she could see there were flames shooting out of a grave and a woman writhing in torment. She noticed it was the grave of a woman who had left the Amish, and now she was suffering for all eternity. After gazing horrified at the scene she went back to her house and unpacked all the boxes. She didn't want to have the same fate as the woman who no longer had a chance to repent.

Another story, and judging from how often I heard it, apparently a favorite to use as a warning to not allow pride or worldly influence into your life.

There was a rebellious young girl who decided she wants to not live according to the guidelines of the Amish church and went and painted her fingernails bright red. Her mother tearfully pleaded with her to remove the paint, but she flippantly disregarded her pleas. The next day she wanted to do the laundry and as she was filling the motor on the washing machine with gas it caught on fire and badly burned her hands and for the rest of her life she had very ugly hands all because she had chosen to allow pride in her life and painted her nails, and God had to punish her.

A man had left the Amish and allowed himself to become baptized again, but after a few years his eyes were opened and he wanted to return to the Amish. On Sundays when it was time for him to join the preachers in their meetings while the rest of the church was singing he would freeze on the bench unable to move a muscle. He had committed an unforgivable sin allowing himself to be baptized again, and now God kept him from ever being able to repent and join the Amish church again.

One of the weirdest stories involved a man growing to a stump he was sitting on and when they tried to cut the stump it bled. For the rest of his days he had to sit there. They built a shanty over him to protect him from the weather, and his wife used to bring him his food to eat. I don't remember what his sin had been, but I do remember being afraid of tree stumps for quite a while.

Life with Lily

Since school is out for the summer our children have basically been devouring books. I'm always looking for more quality books to add to our home library and lately I've been adding to our kindle collection which brings me to today's news.

I'm excited that my books are on sale right now. If you have a kindle you can download the first book in the series, Life with Lily, for free, and the remaining books in the series have been reduced to 3.99. If you don't own a kindle you can do what I did and download the kindle app to your computer and you're good to go.

If you look at the sidebar of my blog you will notice links to all my books.