The Facebook post read: Come Bake With Us! Author Chat with Sherry Gore. Ladies Luncheon, Holiday Baking. Door Prizes! Limited Seating. Tickets $45. "It's on a Saturday! Let's go!" I say to Mom. "It'll be a fun thing to do together." Both of us like Sherry's cookbook, Me, Myself, and Pie and her memoir, The Plain Choice. We knew Sherry recently moved to Bird-in-Hand, which is close to us. So we signed up and last Saturday, we drove to the Bird-in-Hand fire hall, where the event was being … [Read more...] about Baking with Bonnet Novelists
Community
How Miss Garber Got a Swanky New Front Door
It began with a wave of missing bicycles. When I was growing up, many people in my neighborhood were horse-and-buggy Mennonites who used bikes as transportation. Volunteer firefighters kept their unlocked bicycles by their front doors so they could race to the station when a fire call came. Then their bicycles began disappearing, along with other bikes in the neighborhood. The police were called, but bicycles are easy to steal and hard to trace. There was talk about setting a trap for … [Read more...] about How Miss Garber Got a Swanky New Front Door
Ministry Open House & Unplanned Movie Review
This past weekend I went to two very different public events: an open house at the new building for Blessings of Hope Food Ministry and a church showing of the movie Unplanned. I decided writing about both of them in one blog post would be an interesting juxtaposition. Open House at Blessings of Hope Can you feed thousands of people for only 12 cents per meal? Blessings of Hope Ministry in Leola is doing just that— providing 25,000 meals per day, seven days a week, for less than … [Read more...] about Ministry Open House & Unplanned Movie Review
Down to the River
November's leaves make the mountainside slippery. We're going down to the river, to a remote campsite on the banks of the West Branch Susquehanna River. Four months ago, a friend named Elmer perished at that campsite beside the river, not because of the rushing water, but because of a falling tree. He died when the leaves were full and green, and now when autumn has drained the color from the mountains, we're going to visit the campsite in memory of him. There's sixteen of us picking our … [Read more...] about Down to the River
Streetcars & Photoshop
Mennonites love history. It's the 502th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, All-Hallows Eve, and there's high winds and a tornado watch, but tonight we're enjoying a lecture on the streetcars of Lancaster County. I'm at the Martindale Mennonite Fellowship Center, sitting in an audience of about three hundred and eighty people. Our speaker is eighty-three-year-old Herb Fisher. Mr. Fisher uses his version of a Powerpoint (Windows Photos, with verbal instructions for his helper to … [Read more...] about Streetcars & Photoshop