Friday in Pennsylvania

On Thursday on the way back from Hershey to our hotel in Chester we almost left Matthew and Clint at a Hess station. We had been doing head count as we all reboarded the bus each time but this time only 4 or 5 got off and as we were pulling out we saw them coming out of the station! My daughter has "fallen" for a Pennsylvanian and she and he got to sit together on the bus and enjoy each other's company at the restaurants. I have briefly mentioned their courtship in earlier blog entries. They have only written letters since November '08 and gotten to know one another in the "good ol' fashion way". Bro. Shankles, our main driver, took an interest in their relationship and gave them both some good, godly advice. He also talked to me and was a help since he has grown married daughters that evidently made the right choices. Whitney (24) is quite shy and doesn't usually eat in a crowd. This greatly irritated Bro. Shankles as he worried about her not eating. I assured him I was taking her food each night back to the hotel and that we had food in our room. Bro. Shankles calls himself a Tennessee hillbilly (which he is not) and he warned Whitney that "Pennsylvania is a long way from Georgia." He meant in more ways than distance.
Thursday night at church our pastor, Bro. Sammy, preached a great message. I watched as the Pennsylvania visitors to the church looked at him as he preached in authentic southern hell-fire and damnation way. They had a look of wonder like they had never heard anything like what he was saying. Oh, how my heart prayed for them to know God as personal Lord and Saviour! Two local policemen that are now members of the church there gave their testimonies of salvation on Thursday night and what a blessing it was to hear how they came under Holy Ghost conviction and cried out for mercy and forgiveness. Throughout the week we heard Bro. Pinocetti (sp?) and Bro. Clark preach. Bro. Clark's message on "Personal Revival" was wonderful. He said, "Soul-winning is not what I do, a soul winner is what I am." He exhorted us to "seek the Lord while He may be found..." (Isaiah 55) and implored us to ask God for help not to be discouraged and joyless.
A dear Oriental lady in a wheelchair who was saved on Monday night was back every night. It was a joy to see the JOY on her face.
Well...finally we get to Friday... my favorite day as we went to Amish Country. Our bus was repaired now as Bro. Fuerst had labored hard and found a machine shop to help with the pulley. He was right in his diagnosis of what was wrong and the machine shop charged us nothing for their help. We thanked God for showing us favor with them. So, in our newly repaired bus we drove through beautiful rolling farm country. We were able to stop and receive a wagon ride driven by an Amish man named David. Our group was in several different wagons but my group's driver was David. He gave lots of info about the Amish lifestyle and politely answered several absurd questions from some of the wagon's riders. We saw the "church wagon" in front of the house where church was to be that Sunday. The wagon was used to haul the benches. The community had a one room schoolhouse and we were able to buy some water and homemade cookies from some young Amish girls at their farmhouse. The farms were immaculately kept up and absolutely beautiful.
We ate a restaurant that served country style food and it was GOOD. We shopped in a nice gift shop and I was able to purchase some t-shirts with Amish scenes and a documentary DVD. I also bought some jelly for my family and some for my son's family back home.
On our way back to Secane I dozed, joined in some singing, and listened sleepily to the conversations going on around me as we rolled on down the Lincoln Highway and other roads. Here are some conversation excerpts: "Whosoever was not found in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of fire...Do we get to go that way?...You figure it out yet?... the horseshoe puzzle...He got a picture of it...sounds like a plan...What Lara?....Lara? *cell phone ringing..."