Amish Church

Swartzentruber Amish church lasted a good 4 hours, and yet it was a highlight of my week, it meant I got to see my friends. On Saturdays  us little kids got a bath by the wood cook stove in a galvanized metal tub. (Think little house on the prairie 😉) Mama would hang our church clothes out in the living room to make it easier to get all of us ready for church on Sunday. I had 2 or 3 dresses to wear for Sunday, a black one, a blue one, and a brown one. I then wore a white pinaform over it for church. When I got older I had  a dark burgundy dress added to my Sunday attire, and my pin-a-form was replaced with a white apron and cape. For church my every day cotton black cap was replaced with a black silk one. We only had church every other Sunday, and the in between  Sunday was used for visiting friends. We didn't have a church house, but instead, church services were held in each other's homes. In the summer time it was often held in shops or barns.  There was no air conditioning, and having  the crowd in big open spaces made it more bearable.
I remember the excitement of having church at our place. We'd spend two weeks cleaning everything from top to bottom.
Neighbors, friends, and grandma came by to help with all the scrubbing that needed to be done. Oil lamps and lanterns were emptied and washed, the wicks were boiled in soapy water, and the burners were sometimes boiled in tomato juice to make them shine. I can still smell the hint of kerosene mixed with the tomato juice. It sort of smelled like excitement. 😀
The basement was scrubbed and all canned food was neatly organized. The beds were stripped, and the mattresses were given a thorough beating to get any dust out. Walls and ceilings were washed. Mom would bake lots of bread and cookies in preparation for the big day. The men were equally busy cleaning up the barn, and any outside areas. If church was held in the house we would remove all the furniture and replace it with long hard benches that were hauled from place to place on a wagon. My siblings and I enjoyed having the benches stacked on our porch afterwards, it was fun climbing on them and using them as a fort. I especially remember climbing into our forts and enjoying a good thunder storm.  (At that time our benches didn't fold like they do now.)
After two weeks of prepping, the day finally came, as a child it felt like such an important day. I could hardly contain my excitement. 😃
We did our chores, and ate our usual Sunday morning breakfast of coffee soup, sausage and sometimes peaches, or hard boiled eggs. 😋 Now it was time for the final touches..make sure all the benches are in the right place, we'd fill a bowl with cookies and crackers, and sometimes one with snitz pie for the younger kids to eat in case they got hungry before church services were over.
One church district had anywhere from 15 to 30 families, and with each family having anywhere from 1-19 kids it was quite the crowd. My sisters and I would wait in our wash house (a place where we had our wringer washer and big kettle to heat water) and wait for all our neighbors and friends to arrive. All the women would come into the wash house where they took off their bonnets a shawls and put them on a table. The married women then shook hands with everyone before they,  along with their babies and children under 9 went to the main house where services were held. The men all gathered by the barn after unhitching and tying up the horses. Ministers, deacons, and bishops all greeted each other with a handshake and a holy kiss. Everyone else greeted each other with only a handshake. At 9:00 everyone went single file into the house. Starting  with the ministers, then married men, and then the boys. After the boys were all seated, the girls entered, and sat down. All in somber and silence. Smiling during church service was frowned upon. Everyone was given a fat little German hymnal, and we all sang together in a long drawn out tune. The ministers made their way to a private room to discuss and pray, (I guess I'm not sure what they actually did. 😏) while everyone else sang more songs, one being the "Lob Leid" (praise song). Once the ministers returned, the preaching started which was also in German, and very hard to understand since we spoke Pennsylvania Dutch, and only learned German once we went to school. As a young child, it seemed like it would never end, and sitting on that hard bench wasn't that easy.
While the preaching and singing went on the host family made a huge amount of bean/bread soup in the big cast iron kettle that we used for heating water, this would  feed everyone after sevice. It was made of butter, beans, milk, and bread. When church service was finally over, the men would push the benches together to make tables. The young girls would spread table cloths over them and set bowls of soup, bread, pickles, pickled red beets, butter, and two kinds of  jam or jelly. Most times we'd have a jam and Amish peanut butter, or apple butter, and peanut butter. Peanut butter was popular.
One bowl of soup would feed 4-6 people and we'd all dig in with our spoons and eat straight from the bowl. 🍚 😱  The youth usually had a singing later that evening.