She was glad when they got to the other side and climbed the hill. When they reached the top, they were out of breath and sat down to rest. She rubbed her ankle. It was a little sore, a little stiff, but not too bad.
Joseph jumped up. “Time to head out,” he said in his imitation of a grown-up voice. “I’m the leader of the wagon train so everyone has to follow me.”
Lily put Dannie behind Joseph. He could be hard to keep track of if he wasn’t following Joseph around. They walked slowly down the hill and made their way back through the cornfield. When they came out on the other side, Joseph cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Buffalo ahead!”
Mr. Beal’s cows were grazing in the hayfield. As the children started across the field, it was fun to pretend the lazy cows were buffalo. Halfway through, a cow lifted her head and looked at them. “Moo!”
Lily thought possibly, just possibly, that small young cow was Nelly, the princess calf Papa had given to Mr. Beal. Then the cow started walking toward them. “Moo!” Several more joined in. “Moo! Moo!”
This felt strange. Cows didn’t usually care what went on around them as long as there was grass to eat. More and more cows started to walk toward them. They walked faster. The moos grew louder as more and more cows joined in the chorus.
And then Lily’s heart almost stopped.
Right in front of them was Mr. Beal’s enormous black bull, and he didn’t look happy. He walked a few steps toward them and then stopped and pawed the ground and snorted angrily.
“We’d better get out of here,” Lily said as calmly as she could. Joseph grabbed Dannie’s hand and they hurried as fast as they could, Lily hobbling behind on crutches. Lily could hear the bull’s snorts getting louder, but she didn’t dare look back.
“Run, Joseph! Take Dannie and go!” she screamed. Then she stumbled over a clump of grass and her ankle twisted again. She fell flat on her face. Joseph and Dannie kept on running while Lily tried to scramble back to her feet. Forget the crutches! Desperate, she hopped on one foot as fast as she could. Joseph and Dannie had made it to the fence. “Run, Lily, run! The bull is running at you!”
Lily felt as if she were stuck in a bad dream, as if she were running in quicksand. She tried to run without putting much weight on her weak ankle, but she couldn’t move fast enough.
A strange sound started across the pasture, then got louder and louder. A bark. A familiar bark.
“Dozer!” Joseph yelled. “It’s Dozer! I knew he’d come home!”
Dozer raced toward Lily, then ran past her, headfirst at the bull, then around its back to snap at its heels. The bull spun around in a circle, and Dozer kept nipping at him, running off, then stopping and snapping. Over and over, until that bull had moved far, far away from Lily.
She reached the fence and rolled under it to safety on the other side. She lay there panting and gasping for breath. When she finally opened her eyes, she saw Aaron Yoder and Harvey Hershberger, of all people, staring down at her.
“Did she die from fright?” Harvey asked.
“Naw, I don’t think so,” Aaron said. He had Lily’s crutches in his hand.
Lily sat right up, just in time for Dozer to jump through the fence and onto her lap, covering her face with licks. “Oh, Dozer! Where did you come from?” Dozer was beside himself. His whole body was wiggling. His tail wagged so fast and so hard, Lily thought it might whirl right off. He ran from Lily to Joseph to Dannie and back to Lily.
“I found him down by the fishing hole,” Harvey said.
Aaron looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You found him?”
Harvey shrugged. “I helped.”
Aaron rolled his eyes. “He’s a little beat up from the bear, but no bones are broke. I thought you’d want to see him so I brought him right over.”
Lily gave Dozer a closer look—he had some scrapes that were healing, and one ear looked a little torn, but he was the same old Dozer. Wonderful and exasperating.
The bull glared at them, snorting and pawing the ground. “Let’s go home, Dannie,” Joseph said. “Come on, Dozer!” The two boys started off across the yard.
But Dozer wouldn’t budge. He was waiting for Lily.
“That bull is gonna come right through the fence if we don’t get out of here,” Aaron said. He held out a hand to help Lily to her feet. Harvey immediately held out his hand to her, too.
Lily looked at both of their hands, reluctant to take them. It wasn’t so long ago that Aaron had tried to help her up on the school yard and then released her so she fell back down again. She couldn’t quite get past her suspicion about the motives of Aaron Yoder. She was doubly suspicious of Harvey Hershberger.
But then the bull started to ram the fence with his big head. Lily grabbed the boys’ hands and they practically lifted her into the air. Aaron handed the crutches to her and the three of them started off toward Whispering Pines, Lily limping between the boys.
When Lily realized Dozer wasn’t following, she stopped and turned back. “Come on, Dozer! Let’s go home!” Dozer gave a few more warning barks to the bull, then turned and followed behind Lily, Harvey, and Aaron to the safety of home.
After all, he was a fine dog, Dozer was.
Questions about the Amish
Why didn’t Grandma Lapp go live in a retirement home, like most people do, instead of moving into Lily’s crowded house? Family is very important to the Amish, and the elderly are treated with great respect. The Amish don’t have retirement homes. They don’t have nursing homes, either. Instead, the elderly are kept at home and family members share caregiving. They consider such caregiving to be an opportunity to give back to the parent or grandparent who has given so much to them. Many Amish farms have a grandfather’s house, called a Grossdaadi Haus, so that grandparents can live nearby but have a separate entrance and kitchen.
What is an Amish church service like? The Amish hold their twice-a-month church service in homes. Every church family takes a turn hosting church, usually once a year. Homes are built or adjusted with large doors to open the interior to accommodate a large gathering for such a service. The Amish worship service lasts three or more hours. Females sit on one side, males on the other. From the very start, children are trained to remain quiet during the service, though often a plate of cookies or pretzels will be handed down the line of benches. After the church service, they share a simple meal together. The afternoon is reserved for visits with neighbors and friends.
Do the Amish have music in church? Music sung at church is entirely a cappella, without instruments, because that would be considered showy. There is no harmony so that no individual stands out. “We all sing in one voice, in unison,” said an Amish dairy farmer. The congregation sings from the Ausbund—a term meaning “selection” or “anthology”—a hymnal with only printed words. Tunes, learned by memory and passed down through the centuries, are sung not with many voices but with one. The slow tunes, or langsam Weis, as the Amish call them, were composed by martyrs in prison.
Every Amish church service begins and ends with a hymn. Some of the hymns can take as long as twenty minutes to sing. For three hundred years the Amish have sung these hymns in just this way, and so it will always be.
What is an Ordnung? Ordnung is a Pennsylvania Dutch word. Because the Amish have no centralized church government, each local church maintains its own set of guidelines, or Ordnung. While many core values are shared, there is a great deal of variation in Ordnung from church to church.
How do the Amish choose their church leaders? A typical Amish church has a bishop, two ministers, and a deacon. Those leaders are chosen through a divine lottery. The only way to become a minister is to be “hit” by the “casting of the lot,” just the way Judas Iscariot’s replacement was made in the book of Acts. Nominations for the position are whispered to the existing minister from the members, including women, though only married men can be nominated. It’s a system to ensure that a person of good reputation will become a leader.
Whoever receives more than three votes is nominated. Then a slip of paper with “You are the one” written on it is put in an Ausbund—the Amish hymnal. The same number of hymnals as there are nominees are placed on a bench in front of the congregation. Only one hymnal holds the slip of paper. With a divine nod, the man who picks the hymnal with the lot inside becomes the selected minister. When the need for a bishop arises, he will be chosen from the ministers, just the way it happened with Lily’s uncle Jacob.
Why did Uncle Jacob seem sad to be chosen as a bishop? Amish ministers, bishops, and deacons serve without pay and without formal training. They must spend long hours in preparation for the Sunday service and take on the burden of caring for the church members, the way a shepherd cares for his flock of sheep. All that extra work and worry, on top of their own families and jobs. Uncle Jacob’s response was very typical—he felt the weight and responsibility of this new role on his shoulders.
Mary Ann Kinsinger was raised Old Order Amish in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. She met and married her husband, whom she knew from school days, and started a family. After they chose to leave the Amish church, Mary Ann began a blog, A Joyful Chaos, as a way to capture her warm memories of her childhood for her own children. From the start, this blog found a ready audience and even captured the attention of key media players, such as the influential blog AmishAmerica and the New York Times. She lives in Pennsylvania.
Suzanne Woods Fisher’s grandfather was one of eleven children, raised Old Order German Baptist, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Suzanne has many, many, many wonderful Plain relatives. She has written bestselling fiction and nonfiction books about the Amish and couldn’t be happier to share Mary Ann’s stories with children. When Suzanne isn’t writing, she is raising puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind. She lives in California with her husband and children and Tess and Toffee, her big white dogs.
Books by Suzanne Woods Fisher and Mary Ann Kinsinger
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THE ADVENTURES OF LILY LAPP
Life with Lily
A New Home for Lily
A Big Year for Lily
A Surprise for Lily
Books by Suzanne Woods Fisher
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Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World
Amish Proverbs: Words of Wisdom from the Simple Life
Amish Values for Your Family: What We Can Learn from the Simple Life
LANCASTER COUNTY SECRETS
The Choice
The Waiting
The Search
A Lancaster County Christmas
SEASONS OF STONEY RIDGE
The Keeper
The Haven
The Lesson
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