Visiting friends...and Amish workers

Our good friends, Galen and Karen are here visiting for a few days!  We’ve been showing them around town, doing some geocaching,  and playing music together.  Mutual friends, Bill and Susan, live in Columbia and we met them for dinner Monday evening.  Ron and Bill had offices in the same building for years but didn’t know each other, until we all happened to meet in Mountain View, AR a few years ago!  Crazy, huh?

Galen and Karen

There is a lot of activity going on here right now.  Lorisa is having a new roof put on her 130+ year old farm house.  After shopping around, she learned that she could get the best price on metal roofing from the Amish community just north of here.  Because the roof on the house is so steep, she is also paying them to do the work for her.  David is putting the roof on the barn and the other out buildings.

Amish don’t like to have their picture taken.  They believe it’s an unacceptable act of pride, and letting themselves get involved in the world of photography leads them away from true humility.  This is similar to the belief among some cultures that a photograph robs the soul.  They also believe that photographs violate the Biblical commandment, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thyself a graven image.’  Out of respect, I took these photos from a distance and without recognizable faces.

Removing the old chimney

                                         

The men stayed and worked late yesterday because they wanted to get as much done as possible.  They need to spend the next few days on their farms, doing silage and won’t be able to finish the roof until next week.  Lorisa offered to fix dinner for them but John, the Amish man in charge, responded with:  “No, thank you, we will wait and eat when we get home.”  Then, after a short pause, he looked up and added:  “…...but Amish NEVER turn down ice cream!”   She said she would have Ashley pick up some while she was in town.  “Oh, no, I don’t want you to do that!”   She insisted that she wanted to buy it for them, and when she asked what flavor she should get, he answered without hesitation.  “John likes Cookies and Cream,” he said with a big smile.  I guess dinner must have smelled pretty good to them, too, because they ended up eating Lorisa's homemade enchiladas, rice, and beans after they each ate two bowls of ice cream!