Thought it would be nice to have some good news to end the week.

As half of the crew continued working, Dan Martin, a van driver from Lancaster, watched as the barn roof was carefully placed across trusses. “When I got here Monday morning, it was a pile of debris; and look what they have now,” Martin said. “It burned Saturday, they don’t work on Sundays, and they’re going to have this finished in less than a week.”

What struck me most about the story was that it was not just the Amish community that gathered to help, but the entire community.

I was also fascinated by this quote:

“Years ago, the Amish were all farmers, and you wouldn’t have seen all these electric tools,” King said. “Now, probably half of Amish men work in construction, work as carpenters. If you’re going to be competitive with the English, you can’t show up with just a hammer and saw.”

I thought that “worldliness” was the cause of the split between the Amish and the Mennonites. It would be very interesting if these groups were converging, even just a little bit.