Not so very long ago my mom came to spend the night at my house while she was in the area and as we were sitting in the living room looking at newspapers my mom asked if it's ok to talk. I didn't know what was coming because my mom usually doesn't take much interest in my life. She went on to say that someone told her that I posted on Facebook about them and she wondered what I had shared. I couldn't think of anything except that I had just put my story into a book which I was printing myself at the time and happened to have an extra copy on hand. She asked if she could have it and proceeded to read it. I just sat there not knowing what to say or think because I definitely wasn't expecting this. After a bit she asked how they could do better( which by the way has happened multiple times before and always seems a losing battle because my mom doesn't accept it.) After a bit of talking she began to downgrade my experiences saying that they weren't true, that I'm making too big of a deal out of them, basically gaslighting me. I just sat there because this was my mom, I want to respect her, and I had no words to say. I did not understand what was happening but I knew something wasn't right about what she was saying. I came across an article on Facebook by Dr. Henry Cloud on gaslighting a few days later and then I understood what she was doing to me. I wouldn't be surprised if it is a generational thing but I know I definitely want the cycle to be broken by me. In saying all that, it will be somewhat hard to write this article because I don't want to hurt my parents or shame them at all, but I also believe that the truth also needs to be known. In my parent's eyes, it's the children's fault which makes it even harder because even though I think my parents tried to do well, I also would think that if problems start surfacing with the children it would be wise to do self-inventory which my parents aren't open to but who am I to say that as I don't have children and am not married. We children get all the blame and so I feel like it puts me in a hard spot. It is very tempting to just give in to the guilt and just lose what little voice I feel like I have because surely my parents should be right but I've also learned enough through the years to know the cycle needs to be broken so the captives can be free and heal. So enough rambling for now though I hope you will understand how I feel about writing some of these things, that I'm not doing it out of bitterness or revenge...
A normal day usually started around 6 AM. Dad would get up and head out to chore, calling our names as we were expected out in the barn with him in about 15 minutes. This is some of my earliest memories. I remember hearing my dad's voice but being so tired from late nights that I struggled to wake up and get out of bed. I'd dose back off only to be jarred awake by fear about 10 minutes later and realizing what time it was, rushed to dress and head out the door. If I was too late I'd see dad stepping into the shop on his way to come and fetch me. I'm guessing I was between 11-15 years old. Most of the time I was capable of sneaking around the barn and so evade my dad and his anger. (My way of dealing with it was to make a game out of it, some of which I think I mentioned in my last article.) I will spare you other memories just because maybe I say too much sometimes but I will say that the times I did get caught I would nearly panick out of terror because of threats and former experience which usually contained an earful of words that wounded deep on more than one occasion along with physical pain. On with the story...
My dad had a steel working shop until I was maybe 8-10, which he sold because it was causing him too much back pain. Then he started doing veal calves. I still have slight memories of the barn being built. It would hold 200 calves, each had their own stall. They were done in 100 count batches, meaning the one end of the barn held 100 calves and the other end held another 100. In the middle was the feed room. We would get skids of 50 lb. milk replacement feed bags and it would usually fill the entire room with not much extra space. There was a wall in the center of the feed room; the one side had a counter under which were stored 5 gallon buckets of supplements and above the counter were shelves that held medicines(yes, I learned how to give animals shots and more than once accidentally stabbed myself.) Between the shelves and the counter hung the charts on clipboards were we kept the records and the schedule for the milk replacer. To the left of the counter was a fridge were we stored things that needed refrigeration. I don't remember what was on the other side. Across the room next to the wall was the scales and the mixer. I think I shall just draw a sketch then you can visualize it...
It took 15 minutes to mix the milk replacer. He usually started at 6:15 and expected me to be out there by 6:30. I don't remember ever being on time. It took 15 minutes to feed 50 calves and if there were two people it took 15-20 minutes to feed 100 calves. I don't know how big the mixer was but it was maybe 4.5' tall and about as wide. It took about 2 hours from start to finish if both sides were full.
We also had a cow most of the time that I can remember and mom would go out at the same time dad did. She had this pail she used to sit on that would be kept near the door. The sound of that pail hitting the concrete was enough to rouse anyone out of bed because it meant that you were in danger of being caught because it took her about 15 minutes to milk the cow. I still remember one time getting caught and I believe God spared me from physical harm. I'll spare the details but I believe God caused my dad to have compassion or something that kept him from doing what he intended to do.
Next we would head in for breakfast which usually consisted of maybe eggs and bacon and fried potatoes or a variation of these, oatmeal, scrapple and puttins, or sometimes fried mush. After everyone was done eating someone would fetch the Bibles and anyone capable of reading would take part and the chapter for the morning would be divided up so that each individual had a certain amount of verses to read, starting with the youngest going around the table and dad read the last ones. I don't remember there ever being any discussion. It was just something to check off the list. A duty performed. Now to move on to other things. (If there was anything said about what was read, it was often in a fear-mongering, legalistic, religious way as that's how it was done in church.)
If it was laundry day in my younger years all the dirty laundry got toted down in the basement where the old Maytag wringer washer was. There were 2 sheets of plywood on the moist gravel floor, half of which was used for the washer and rinsing tubs and the other half for sorting the laundry into piles. It was a whole forenoon process, with each load washing for 15 minutes. The laundry would then be toted across the lane and pinned on the wash line. In 2000, my parents built the big house, before that we lived in a mobile home with an addition to the living room and a bedroom for my parents. The big house was built against and connected to the addition which currently is used as the "vesh haus"(wash house) for laundry, outdoor clothing and footwear, a summer kitchen where mom does the canning along with a sink for washing dirty hands and faces that come in from being outside. I'm guessing I was maybe 13-14 when we got our first regular washer and I remember we children all crowded around to watch it spin. I remember putting my ear close and listening to the hum as it spun and it reminded me of how the van wheels sound when traveling (I love to travel.)
Also I have scars on my right hand where I got stitches as a 2 year old who got her hand into the wringer washer when mom was called away to help catch the horse that had escaped the pasture.
In the summer time there was outside work to do. We were often sent to weed the garden. I know we often didn't do like we were supposed to. We had this thing for building things in the dirt, whole villages, the only manufactured things were matchbox cars, the rest was all provided by nature: mud, stones, sticks, moss, leaves, grass, whatever we could find to use with our imagination. (I still am fascinated by miniature things and enjoy drawing blueprints and sketches. One of my friends told me quite a few years ago that she could see me being an interior designer but I've never pursued it or looked into it because I couldn't think of a way I could use it to further the Kingdom.) Here's 2 just to satisfy your curiosity...
I don't feel like I remember much of day to day life, more it's just painful and sad memories that I prefer to limit for the sake of the topic.
I was homeschooled from 1st to 4th grade. By then there was a private school built 2 miles from my house. (The community was still relatively new and we were more on the outskirts.) So the year I started 5th grade we started biking to school. In rainy weather the neighbor man or his wife would take us to school. Usually there was a rush in the mornings when school was in season; chores had to be done, lunches packed, get combed and changed into the proper clothes for school, etc. Often we grabbed breakfast and rushed out the door. We were often late for school. I remember bringing home quite a few tardy cards.
Perhaps you are wondering why I mentioned late nights and having a hard time getting up in the morning... school was an added stress for me(we were mocked by some of the boys because we had veal calves which have a different smell than dairy cows and the smell would cling on our clothes I guess) Almost every day I would bring home almost every subject. Homework was a never ending task. I was punished in almost every possible way the teacher could think of because I was just seen as a chronic daydreamer. I still remember that day in 7th grade when my teacher kept me after school once again and took me down in the basement to get spanked. I was crying before she even spanked me because of my deep embarrassment and just the hopelessness and desire for someone to just understand me. I also got countless spankings at home and other forms of punishment. Nobody understood. On a good note, I was a straight A student in 8th grade because 2 of the mockers were out of school and I had less stress to deal with. It was also the year that the 8th grade math books were being revised so we redid 7th grade math instead. Even though I like math I don't know if I would've scored straight A with 8th grade level math...
When we got home from school, we would eat what was left in our lunches and often mom was on us to get changed into our chore clothes and go do our chores or to get started on our homework. There was no spare time for me. It was all taken up with homework. Mom didn't find out till my next oldest sister and I were out of school, and something happened in the neighborhood, that we were mocked in school. She only found out because she cornered us in the barn to ask us if dad ever did bad(sexual) things to us.
My oldest brother is 10 years younger than me and so my sisters and I had to help with the farm work. I remember going along the pasture fence with a small scythe to cut down the tall grass so that it doesn't short out the fence because the animals always seemed to find loopholes. We had a horse, a cow, and also some calves that didn't do well on milk replacer that we would fatten up, and chickens. In later years we had pigs. I always feared those things and would sometimes wonder if the account of the demons in the demon-possessed man entering into the swine in the Bible had anything to do with why these things seemed to be so evil in their screams and manners. My one sister though did manage to ride some bareback. There were also such jobs as mucking out the animal pens, baling hay, fieldwork, etc. I learned how to drive the tractor and the dozer and use all kinds of other tools and machinery.
After dad got rid of the steel shop he started a woodworking business. After I was out of school I was required to help get orders done. I learned enough to be able to put together a drawer from raw lumber. There were some things I wasn't allowed to do, like doing the varnishing part though I did help with staining and sanding between varnish coats. Dad would usually take a nap after "mittag"
(midday) lunch and in that half hour to an hour we had ways to slip silently out of the house and into the woods acting stealthily like Indians and acting like monkeys climbing off the porch to avoid the creaky steps, heading to the shop to create something out of wood (I think my little sisters may be in possession of the dollhouse I made), play in the creek, or build miniature villages out of nature's objects(my siblings still do this under the porch at home). Other times when the weather was bad we would find a book to read, play games or go out in the barn and play in the haybales. One thing I remember is that on the one side of the arch that separated the living room from the kitchen hung the mounted antlers of the first buck dad shot. There was a table in the center of the room and we would stand at the far end of the table and shoot rubber bands and see how many we can get to hang and got points for each one that didn't fall down. As I got older I'd sit in my room with a book or run to the woods. I liked to just sit still and watch the birds. I remember one time as I was walking along I heard a bird scolding nearby and bent down to look under the brush overhang because I heard an animal. After a few minutes the animal suddenly saw me, a mere 2-3 yards away, and departed much faster than he had come. A black fox...
Being out of school also meant that I needed to go clean for "English" people. It also opened the door to get involved in forbidden things but my parents needed the money so we were sent out to work in other's homes. We were not allowed to keep any of the money we earned. Occasionally if someone gave us a gift it was put in savings or it was a little bit of spending money. When I became of age at 21 my dad told me I don't need a savings account but I've been told otherwise later in life. Let me just clarify here that I don't expect this to be the norm but I don't know. I never really gave it a thought other than being frustrated about it as a teenager that I never got to keep any money(I think I only had about $700 to my name to start out with)until not long ago I mentioned it in the course of my conversation with a friend and she was almost speechless. She said she never heard of that before. I guess looking at it from her perspective helped me see just how selfish it is and also helps me understand why I had to practically teach myself how to keep a budget and all that other good stuff that goes with money. I still struggle because I really want to be a good steward of the things God has blessed me with and 2020 certainly has not helped in a good way.
I don't remember how old I was, maybe 11, when my mom started teaching me how to sew. I know some people among the Amish sew all their clothes, but we only do our dresses. Mom sewed quilts, sometimes nightgowns and shirts, and there was always mending to do. For the most part we just sewed dresses. Occasionally the neighbors had things they wanted mom to sew or mend. Sometimes we would sew doll clothes. I still have a few that I think I made.
Supposed to be a pillow minus the stuffing.
I hand stitched this set at maybe 15 or 16 for my favorite doll...
Around 8 I started to learn embroidery. It's not my thing and I never got very far with it but here's 2 of my earliest ones:
This is what I'm currently working on. This is a finished one but I need to do a total of 20(I have 2 done).
These are the fabrics I want to use for the whole quilt when I'm done with the embroidering.
I often wonder why I even do these projects. I've got a quilt in the frame that's 3/4 of the way done. I really want to do more for God and yet I guess this is the kind of culture I grew up in where spirituality or soul winning is not the focus. I tend to get bored easily so if I don't have a project to work on I need to create something it seems. And then I feel so useless for the Kingdom of God because what little I do seems like nothing and the need is so great I'm overwhelmed and have no clue where to even start in a way that will even be worth anything.
In later years, the Haiti benefit auction has become a thing in my parent's area. Here's a video. https://youtu.be/9Vec8ZV-ZgI
There's several people I recognized, I think one is my cousin and I couldn't quite tell if one of my sisters was there or not. It is held at the local produce auction. There would be much preparation for this.
Some may be familiar with Green Dragon Farmer's Market near Ephrata Pa...My mom had a clock she had gotten there when she was dating dad. The closest thing we had in our area as I was growing up was the Windmill. Maybe once a summer as a treat we would take a Saturday off and spend the day walking around looking at all the shops and wares for sale. Auntie Anne's soft pretzels were a favorite. Also cotton candy. The popcorn man had this giant machine where you could watch the popcorn pop. There was a man who did chainsaw carvings and I remember this big bear carved out of a tree log. He looked almost real. There were some musical stands. One person had this table full of different size glassware partly full of water. He would wet his finger and slide it along the rim and each one had it's own unique sound. It made some pretty cool music.
Another big thing is the Dr. Morton sale. I think my grandma donates a quilt every year. Here's a video:
Quilting is another thing. My one grandma makes quilts. She has people working for her. My mom used to sew for her and I remember as a young child sitting on a small stool next to the sewing machine cutting apart the line of patches mom was sewing. It seems to have been tradition that every child gets 5 quilts and 3 comforters when they leave home. Last I talked with my mom she was working on a quilt and hoping to get it out of the frame. I don't know who it is for though. Perhaps you're wondering what quilting is... let me share what mine looks like and I'll explain...
Quilting is the process of hand stitching three layers together. There is the top layer which usually consists of sometimes quite intricate pieces sewn together to form a design. The middle layer is soft puffy stuff called batting, somewhat like stuffing in a teddy bear, only in a sheet form. The back is a piece of fabric that usually matches to the colors on the top layer. I'm not the best at all at quilting but I took a close up so you can see the stitches. There are all kinds of patterns you can use. You can even use different color thread if you want.( I've seen some where someone takes a white fabric to use for the top, then they will draw a picture on the quilt top and then use different colors of thread so that you can see the outline and what it's supposed to be, for example: a duck on a pond with a few bulrushes.)
We had flowerbeds around the house. Behind the house was the garden. In earlier years there was a creek that flowed between the house and barn. There was a very old willow tree with the top cut off that had an old playhouse built into it. The roots started causing problems and in preparation for building the big house the creek's direction was changed and the tree taken down. Nearby was an old 20-30' deep hand dug artesian well with a shanty sitting on top where mom stored the canned goods. Occasionally the well was used for irrigation. I don't remember if we used it for drinking water or not. To this day it is still there with a metal cover on top. In later years we had a small plastic playhouse and it sat on top of that well. I remember as a small child looking into the black depths and being afraid, my imagination creating all kinds of crazy scenarios.
In the summer and fall is the busy canning season when corn, beans, cucumbers, peas, strawberries, rhubarb, onions, peppers, potatoes, celery, and perhaps a few more things found their way into the freezer, canning jars, or the cool dark basement. In the fall and winter it was butchering time. Often a few beef, maybe a pig in later years, and whatever deer dad was able to shoot in hunting season was processed into hamburger or sausage and sometimes homemade bologna or dried beef. Sometimes dad would shoot a deer at dusk and then after supper and chores we would go out with him to help track the deer and bring them home. I remember one such time when there had been panther sightings in the area that we went out after dark and about 5-10 minutes in dad said something about forgetting his gun. I was old enough to understand what that could mean and struck fear into my heart, but thankfully we had no problems and we found the deer. I learned how to track deer and how to skin them. Other kinds of meat that ended up on our table was squirrel, rabbit, raccoon?, turkey, maybe grouse and pheasants, I can't remember what all.
Fishing was another thing we did. When I was very young, dad and his brothers went "smelting". I still remember the crispy taste of these small fish between 4-6" long after mom fried them. I'd so love to have some again. They were called smelt but I don't know if that is the real name. They were like large minnows. Sometimes we would go down on the lake in someone's boat and fish. There is also this place called "the outlet" which is basically the creek that runs out of the Keuka Lake into the Seneca Lake, about a 9+ mile distance. There was a place where the river began that as a teenager I went with dad and his brothers to fish for catfish at night. We would hang up lights to draw the fish in and then we all had fishing rods with bait on the hooks. There was also a trail that followed the river from one end to the other with old mill ruins and waterfalls. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons we would go there to fish. This picture is from May 2003 on "Ascencion Day"( a holiday for the Mennonites) when apparently all of dad's side of the family got together with a picnic lunch and the men fished and the ladies walked. To the left of the picture is the waterfall. On the right may be some mill ruins. My dad's mom sits in the front and most of the grandchildren standing behind her are married today. I am on the right in the back row with a blue dress and white covering. My cousin on the far left in the back row went to Weaverland Conference Mennonite church which is more liberal...
In winter time when the ice was thick enough on the lake we would go ice fishing. I remember a few times when the ice was thick enough that they drove the truck on the ice. And yes, I learned how to clean fish though it's been years.
Most days were filled with every day living; making meals, mending, working outside, cleaning and also depending on the season there was canning and butchering to do. Schoolwork took up most of my time in the winter. After I was out of school I had cleaning jobs to do and help dad with the farmwork. At 18 I started teaching school as a way to escape the stress at home. That kept me busy. I enjoyed it for the most part. Here's a few pictures...
Me with my students...
The whole school...
Singing for the visitors...
View from the front...Sundays were for going to church. We lived 5 miles from church and it took a half hour to get there with the horse and buggy. It took even longer on the way home because we had some nasty hills to climb. Church started at 9:30 and usually lasted 2-2.5 hours. We usually didn't get home till 12:30-1:00. After lunch dad and mom would take a nap and we'd be allowed to play. When in school I usually spent most of the afternoon on homework. Other than that we could be found in the woods, reading books, or making places in the dirt amongst other things and of course there were always chores to do. Sunday evening supper usually consisted of tomato soup, popcorn and occasionally dad would make scrambled eggs to go along with the meal. Sometimes we went hiking to a falls several miles from our house. We had to follow a creek up the ravine about half a mile to get to it. We call it the 100' falls though it may be taller than that. When I was around 15 or 16 I took my friends one Sunday afternoon. There was this place about half way where the water had carved a slide out of the stone and at the bottom was a pool that was about the size of a bathtub and about as full of water. We spent a while sliding only to come home and find slits in our skirts from sliding on the stone which wasn't felt in the water. Mom wasn't too happy as the dresses were fairly new...
We had quite a few "English" neighbors. The one we had the most to do with was the neighbor over on the next road. Dad farmed his land. He worked in the public school cafeteria and would often bring us leftovers like turkey gravy and chicken nuggets. He also has this famous molasses cookie recipe that he won't share and everytime my grandma is in the area he brings her some cookies. They are so moist and good. I remember other neighbors coming by to talk. (I remember when mom would be talking with someone she would play with our braids and I remember that I liked it because it seemed to be the only time she had time to just stand still and caress me.)They would often take dad on errands or help out if needed and vice versa. There was also this one old man, I think he was in WW2, who had a summer cottage on the next road. He lived in New York City and would come up for 2 week intervals through the summer. We would visit him occasionally and one time he invited us over because he wanted to show us about the boat he was on during the war. It was new to us and I still remember mom's hesitancy because it wasn't allowed in the church regulations. That may have been the first time I saw things on a TV. But later on I saw more when cleaning for the neighbors. It was hard to tear my eyes from the screen because I was curious and fascinated by this thing that wasn't allowed in our circles.
We spoke Pennsylvania Dutch at home. It is my first language. English was learned when we started 1st grade. Thirdly, in third grade we started learning high German( there is also a low German called Platdeutsch, spoken by Mexican Mennonites and probably others) I've been asked by one of my coworkers once if I was bilingual and one of the boys from my former church thought I must come from the Netherlands or something because of my accent. I find languages interesting and am fascinated with accents. I tried to teach myself Spanish out of some old books I found at a thrift store but it didn't go very far. Here is a few videos to give you an idea what the language sounds like:
This one has more the Amish accent and it is similar to what we heard in church. A lot of the words are the same ones we use in every day language, only we wouldn't pronounce the "L" as distinctly at the end of the words like in this video.
This is more like what our everyday language sounds like.
If you are interested in more just search for Pennsylvania Dutch on YouTube. You'll find a lot of different videos.😉
I don't remember hearing much about mentally ill people. I don't remember hearing about people committing suicide.(Mennonites don't believe there's any hope for those who commit suicide. The thing that kept me from taking my life was fear of pain and I couldn't find any way around it in the Bible.) I do remember though when Green Pastures was built next to Philhaven near Mt. Gretna Pa. The Amish and Mennonite people realized that they need to do something for their people because they wanted to keep them in their culture and out of the "world". I don't know how many years it was going before I was there but I do remember that there were Amish, Swartzentruber Amish, Weaverland Conference Mennonites, Old Order Groffdale Mennonites, German Baptist, and more there. I remember hearing of one family where there was abuse and another family who had marriage problems but I'm sure there were many more. When I moved home again after being at Green Pastures I went for counseling at Ray of Hope, started by my community and the neighboring Weaverland Conference Mennonites. My counselor was a deacon in the Weaverland church. I also remember talking with the bishop of my district (by this time the community had grown enough that there were 2 bishops, there were 6 churches and probably 500 or more households, the Lancaster County, Pa settlement is the biggest with 10 churches, over a 1,000 households and 3 bishops) and I forget why I was talking to him but one thing he said was that he is a self-made counselor and that turned me off.(Within the last several years he has split off with a lot of people in the district and started their own church. They are called the Rufunites as his name is Rufus.) Here's another person's story in which she explains things that I don't know quite how.
Her story is different than mine of course.
My parents were often arguing and in my 12 year old mind I was sometimes scared that it will break into a fight. I also felt responsible for the way my parents acted. I blamed myself for them being so upset and felt that I should try harder but the stress was so heavy on me that I had no energy and was totally unmotivated. I remember one time maybe around 15 or 16 I decided to really do something worthwhile that would please my mom. I went up in the produce patch and I don't know how many weeds I pulled but I know I almost overdid it in the summer heat only to come into the house to be scolded for disappearing. That about did me in. I had tried so hard to please my mom and make her happy.. And just maybe she would love me...to no avail...
I don't know how other families were but there was no emotional connection between us or I mean if there was I wasn't involved. I don't know how old I was, maybe 15 or 16, and I told my sister to do something and she talked back to me and something just broke inside of me. I just started sobbing and couldn't stop and I had no safe place to go but I went inside and mom sat me down on the couch and asked what was wrong and I said my sister didn't listen, knowing that wasn't the real problem but I couldn't explain what was wrong. That was one of the very few times I actually remember crying as a teenager. There was another time when I begged God to take me out of this hell of a life to no avail but I won't go into detail. Then came the time I was sent to Green Pastures and the love shown to me was so relentless that it broke me to pieces after a few days because I realized I didn't believe there were any kind people in the world anymore. Love and kindness was so foreign I had no idea how to handle it( and still struggle 12 years later).
I never heard my parents pray. The only thing was when they helped us say our bedtime prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Mom read us a Bible story at bedtime and then we would kneel and she would help us say our prayer, then we would kiss her good night and she would at times tuck us into bed. I remember saying I love you mom when I kissed her but there was no emotional connection. It was just what we said. Nights were hard at times. I often had nightmares of going down the stairs only to fall into a bottomless haze. Other times I had nightmares about authority figures. I still vividly remember the one where dad and the game warden were trying to catch me in the barn loft. I woke up just as they cornered me. There were others I had too. Nightmares aren't too common anymore unless I'm stressed about something.
Over the years I've had people ask me questions I couldn't answer about the Mennonites. I only knew what I was told and that was often,"we've always done it this way". I would sometimes answer "because that's the rules of the church " because it was but was such a hollow answer. It really made no sense but I had no other answer but when I finally had the chance I started searching for real answers. I sometimes wonder how many people have had questions and never found answers but gave up because they were discouraged or told to stop questioning. I did ask a minister in the church once about a few questions I had because he also a counselor and the answers were still not satisfying. It's just so sad and my heart aches to reach those souls who have or had questions. I do not currently live directly in the community and lost all my friends when I left and we were always taught that when people leave its because they want the wrong things. When the bishop announces that someone no longer wants to be a member, he says, "lus des en wanning sei zun uns all"/ let this be a warning to us all. Occasionally some will come to shop at the store where I work, like today, and I watch them and look into their faces and wonder what their stories are, if they have unanswered questions, and if they're really actually happy living like a Mennonite with all the rules and traditions that's been handed down for years...
I'm sure there's more that could be said and I probably skipped some things but I think this article is probably about long enough. I feel like I've done an inadequate job on this topic but I hope you can get an idea of what life can be like as a Mennonite...I hope you enjoyed this article and if you have any questions feel free to contact me through my website or social media...thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment.
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