Life

Good Morning..GOOD BOOK..Good Coffee:)


...the BEST little cafe in town...

(good coffee there too)

...the gardens and flowers are really pretty this time of year...
must be because of all this...


So yes, it's raining a lot, but it hasn't been too humid and it makes for some beautiful sunsets!

Work this week has been crazy, but good. All told I will be working with 16 families and continually looking for more as per doctor's orders to "find as many as possible." It's been a real stretch just showing up at people's homes and having to explain who I am, what I'm doing and asking them to participate, while keeping graciousness and the love of the Lord first. The way of connection out here among the Amish is word of mouth. Case in point of the last family I just visited that was a "cousin of my wife's aunt's daughter-in-law who has a couple of children who are struggling in school and have the brittle hair..." Thanks to the Ohio Amish Directory (see above post) all I need is the name of the father and mother and then they are pretty easy to look up. The hard part is (as I said) just showing up... So far all of them have been eager to participate, want answers and what help we can give them for their kids. And between them feeding me (WOW are they ever GOOD cooks!!), trying to teach me Dutch, and me teaching them what little Spanish I know it's a pretty hilarious mix! We should be able to send all the gathered blood samples out to the lab in London, England the first of next week and start getting results the following two weeks. I'm not sure who's more excited... me or them!

...four hours later I determine that they are third cousins with double seconds and double firsts in the ancestry above them...*sigh*...mapping family trees gets really interesting in this part of the country...
After all day of that I wandered out into the semi-clogged streets of Walnut Creek to be a tourist

Was really tempted to buy one, but I didn't...

"Amish" dolls. The crack-up about this is that the way these dolls are dressed is NOT the way that the Amish dress most of the time. I'm not sure about Lancaster County, but in Holmes County black bonnets and black aprons are rarely seen. I am still debating about what to do for the weekend, and if I stay around here, it's off to Berlin and Charm for more "tourism" and exploring! All these little antique shops are VERY hard to walk away from without loading up the car with stuff that is old and beautiful! Oh and dad, I found the museums so one of the goals for the summer is to visit EVERY ONE of them and learn something. A lot of them are based around German culture and the migration of the Anabaptist people, so it should be really interesting (well, to be honest I've never found a museum that wasn't interesting). To all; hope and pray your weekend is filled with good times, good fellowship and good messages from the Word!