The winner of last week’s blog contest is Carol Graves. Carol won an autographed copy of When the Soul Mends, to be sent when its available.

Congratulations, Carol!

I’m adding the last touches to latest edition of Plain News. If you enjoy insights into the Amish life, I encourage you to join the newsletter. It only goes out four times per year, so you won’t get tired of it;-)

This next edition has: 
    Sneak peek ~ chapter one of When the Soul Mends
    Part two of Connecting to the Old Order Amish Community
    Chance to win an autographed copy of all three books in Sisters of the Quilt series
    A tidbit on using a reel mower from an Old Order Amish friend
    A few words from guest author Tamera Alexander
    And some good reads shared by my editor Shannon [Hill] Marchese

To sign up, click here: Plain News Newsletter (After you sign up, you’ll receive a welcome letter with a link to the previous newsletter. After you’ve read that one, at the bottom of it is a link for another previous newsletter.)

A night of changing roles ~

My husband and I are house project people. We’ve had decades of taking on at least one large project each year. Even when money is really tight there are tons of projects that can be done, from deep cleaning storage rooms to buying a couple gallons of paint and painting as many rooms as possible.

Project time rolled around again this past week, only this time someone else has been doing a large part of the labor. We had new flooring laid in the kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom and also new kitchen countertops.

We were without access to the restrooms for days, no water to the kitchen for even longer, and the stove as well as the washer and dryer can’t be moved onto the flooring until Friday.  

Now it’s pretty easy to do without a kitchen for a few days in the summer, especially since we only have one child to feed these days. . . if he were at home, which he isn’t. Not very often since school let out.

Our second son and his wife took him back to thier place, which is an hour away.

Hubby and I slept at home, but last night we loaded laundry into our van and crashed our oldest son’s place. He only lives a couple of miles away. So we made a wreck of his laundry room, took over the remote control to his television, and propped our feet up while he broke out the snacks;-) Hmmmm. Maybe we should do two projects next year. LOL! 

Anyone who waded through all of my meanderings deserves something.

For a chance to win an autographed copy of When the Soul Mends, just leave a comment below. I’ll draw a winner next week and it’ll be sent close to its release date.

We have a winner of the Amish-made washboard with the quilt patch, and an autographed book of When the Morning Comes.

Our winner: Diana of Hanover, Pennsylvania

Thank you to everyone who participated!

Congratulations, Diana! The items will be placed in the mail later this week. The first part of this week I’ll write my third newsletter so it can be sent to Gayle Desalles, my e-zine virtual assistant. If you aren’t signed up for the newsletter, I encourage you to do so. It’s free, only goes out four times a year, and shares a lot of things I think you’ll enjoy ~ from how I connected with the Old Order Amish, a few tidbits about life inside an Amish home, Amish recipes, and special contests.

To sign up, click here: Plain News Newsletter (After you sign up, you’ll receive a welcome letter with a link to the previous newsletters.)

In the upcoming June newsletter:
    Sneak peek ~ chapter one of When the Soul Mends
    Part two of Connecting to the Old Order Amish Community
    Chance to win an autographed copy of all three books in Sisters of the Quilt series
    A tidbit on using a reel mower from an Old Order Amish friend
    A few words from guest author Tamera Alexander
    And some good reads shared by my editor Shannon [Hill] Marchese

Now on to other fun stuff: how about a week long contest with a chance to win a novel that’s not yet in print: WHEN THE SOUL MENDS

Leave a comment and you’re entered. I’ll send the winner an autographed copy of When the Soul Mends close to its release date.

The Hames Contest was fantastic! Nancy Lou of Raleigh, North Carolina received her Amish-made hames in the mail today. A huge thanks to every one of you who participated! I was thrilled with the response!

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I have an article coming out in the 2008 Storytellers’ Journal that tells about how I connected with the Amish.

I’ve shared a little of it here, but the full article will be available in May at your local Christian bookstore. Just ask the store manager for your complimentary copy of Storytellers’ Journal. If they dont’ have it, ask the manager order copies from their WaterBrook/Multnomah sales representative.

Connecting to the Old Order Amish Community

The garden needed more weeding, but the sun was sliding below the horizon, taking with it my ability to distinguish between weeds and produce. Laundry on the clothesline flapped in the summer breeze, reminding me and my Amish friend, Anna,[1] that we’d moved too slowly through the chores as I spent the day learning to handle the responsibilities of an Amish woman.

While I helped Anna take the clothes off the line, I reflected on how we met. Five years ago, I’d had a story in my heart that I wanted to write, but I needed an inside view. I wondered whether I could interview someone who was living an Old Order Amish life.

While growing up in Maryland, I’d had an Amish friend. Our adventures generated a desire in me to write about the joys and difficulties of relationships between the Plain folk and outsiders. The angst and disapproval of our parents concerning our friendship led to the story idea about Hannah and Paul. Decades later, when I actually started writing a novel about an Amish family, my friend and I lived a thousand miles apart and I’d lost contact with her.

[1] Names have been changed to assure privacy

That’s the intro to the article and I hate to stop there, but I have to. The full article will be available in May at your local Christian bookstore. Just ask the store manager for your complimentary copy of Storytellers’ Journal. If they don’t have it, ask the manager to order copies from their WaterBrook/Multnomah sales representative. Writing the article was a very enjoyable project I’d love to share with you. The final product is free, so don’t be shy about requesting a copy from your local Christian bookstore.

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The new contest has two items ~

The Amish-made craft seen above is one of the items. It is a
wooden washboard with a log cabin quilt patch.

And an autographed copy of When the Morning Comes is the second item.

The craft items I give away are made by Amish friends and I treasure them, but my hand-made items I want to share about today are created by my sister. She’s quite an artist and she’s made cherished works for as far back as I can remember. She doesn’t create the items as a profession; they are gifts. Her gifts range from cross stitch family trees, to hand-painted Christmas ornaments, to watercolor & caligraphy gift cards, to portraits of family members, and beyond. A part of her is in each item and it still surprises me how that makes each object carry a piece of who we’ve always been ~ the love, the fun, the struggles, the parts of life no one else is privvy to.

For a chance to win both of these items, all you need to do is enter a comment.

Do you have a hand-made item in your home that is special to you? Something maybe you or your sister, mom, dad, brother, or child made. If you’d like to share about that, we would all enjoy reading about it. If you’re more comfortable leaving a comment that simply says enter me, that works just fine too;-)

You don’t need to leave any personal info where readers can see it. You can enter your first name only and then log your e-mail address into the correct field when leaving a comment. I’ll be the only one able to read your e-mail address.

The contest is for residents of the continental United States and it will continue until June 1st.

God’s peace ~

Cindy

The Hames contest ended Saturday, March 15th. We have a winner! Nancy Lou of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Thank you for all the wonderful comments!!

I’ll begin a new contest soon!

Original post:

For those who’ve read my books, you know an Englischer is anyone who’s not Amish or Plain Mennonite. But sometimes my life gets so entangled with today’s electronic gadgets that it’s too Englischer for my own tastes.

There are times when I immerge myself in the ways of the Amish so much that when I have to reenter my own life it feels . . . foreign.

Earlier this week, after just such a time of thinking and breathing the Plain life, I was driving by myself in unfamiliar territory. I’d finished one project and realized I needed some info before proceeding.

I quickly realized I didn’t have the phone number or name the number would be listed under with me, so at first I thought I was stuck. Then I remembered I’d received the info via an e-mail a few weeks back. I pulled off at the next spot, which happened to be a church parking lot, and began scrolling through the e-mails on my Blackberry. Within two minutes, I found what I was looking for. Paper and pen weren’t as handy as my laptop, which sat on the passenger’s seat next to me, so I opened it and took a few notes, including the phone number. I then turned off my XM radio and called them. Let me add I really enjoy XM radio. It’s not only commercial free, but it lists each name of the song playing and then lists the artist. Anyway, after ending the call, I plugged their address into my GPS, punched the reroute button, turned my XM station back on, and headed for the new destination.

Weird, weird feeling, really. I’m truly not electronically savvy, yet I find myself relying on the basic functions of those things to keep the frustration level down. All of my needs that day could have been handled differently, but the extra time spent would have been wearisome.

How convenient is it that your cell phone can have a full address book at your fingertips? –so filling out forms for a multitude of things is so much easier. Need the address and phone number of your child’s doctor, their former school, or your insurance provider’s fax number . . . from two providers ago? It’s all at your fingertips. Need access to e-mails, so you can have whatever last minute info that was sent to you? Or when you’re at work you can e-mail yourself info that you’ll need while on the road and, as long as you can find your phone, you can find the info. For someone like me who can’t keep up with papers when traveling, but never misplaces the cell phone, it removes a lot of stress.

Not long ago, when a young adult female told me she gets ten times more done in a day than her mom ever did when her mom was an entrepreneur at this same age, I reminded her she has full time help that her mother never had, modern technology.

Now if a young Amish woman made the statement that she was able to do ten times more than her mother had at the same age, I’d be very, very curious to know what caused the difference.

~HAMES~

Each Amish-made creation is a pair of curved wooden pieces that are part of a horse’s harness where traces/leads/leather straps are attached. An Amish-sewn quilted square is between the wooden pieces and it makes for a very attractive and interesting wall hanging. To see a larger photo, click on the photo, but then click the back button and not the X. These are hanging in my home, but I’ll give one of them away. The retail value of this item is anywhere between $60 and $100, depending on who is selling them;-)

For a chance for you to win the set of hames shown below, just enter a comment.

The contest is for residents within the continental United States. On March fifteenth, I’ll draw a winner from those who leave a comment below. I’d love to hear about anything you remember from your childhood that is different than how we handle things today, but if you just want to say: enter me, that’ll work just as well.
You don’t need to leave any personal info where readers can see it. You can leave your first name only and then log your e-mail addy into the correct field when leaving a comment. I’ll be the only one able to read your e-mail address.

If you send a friend to the site, have them tell me your name and number in the comment (e.g. Mary, commenter number five sent me.) and I’ll enter your name an extra time for each friend who mentions you.

We went to Pennsylvania last week. The “we” part is my husband, two of our sons, one daughter-in-law, and myself. It was my first time to get to show my daughter-in-law off to some of the Pennsylvania folk Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to see everyone once in Pennsylvania or do half of what I wanted. Isn’t that the way? I have family there, so we juggled our time between family and our Amish friends.  Although the Amish have become more comfortable having a few photos snapped, I only post by direct permission. I’ll post a few each week until it’s time for reruns.