Living With The Amish

Living With The Amish

OK, You may think us Amish are strange and old-fashioned folk, what with our buggies, beards, and barn raisings. But to tell you the truth, we feel pretty blessed with the richness of our lives. Wow. Last year, five of our Amish teenagers were invited to experience life in Great Britain. Now we’d like to show some hospitality back and welcome some young English folk to come share in the pleasures of our Amish life. Good morning guys. My name’s Jonathan and my wife is a nurse. My wife Marietta and I feel most privileged to be the first to play host to the young British folk. Over the next five weeks they’ll stay with several different brethren from Pennsylvania to Ohio to get a true taste of just how us plain folk live. I just know we’re all in for a treat. This is Middlefield, Ohio, home to 14,000 Amish folk and our hometown. My name’s Jonathan Hershberger, and I enjoy working in the local timber trade. While my wife Marietta, well, her job is to tend to the house, and she just loves that. It’s a quiet life, but it’s all going to change when six strange English youths arrive at our door in just a few minutes. few days time. I don’t like to think about it beforehand what they might be like because obviously they’re from a whole different country. You really don’t know what to expect. All we do know is that these teenagers have been handpicked to represent the best of British youth. I want to live with the Amish because I know that they’re quite minimalistic and they don’t have electricity, they don’t have a lot of the things that I take for granted every day. And I want to know that one, what I’m like, can I, could I survive like that? And then two, you know, do I love it? I like surviving like that. Oh, you can do my fake eyelashes in a minute. Going to live with the Amish hopefully is going to help me build my confidence. I don’t have anything in common, really. I suppose my life is nothing like theirs, but I’d like to be able to have that simplified lifestyle because I think life sometimes is so complicated with all the media and pressure of looking good and stuff. I don’t like that. It makes me feel really sad. Yeah, it’s fine. Marietta and I have lived in this house ever since we got married six years ago. We have always dreamed of having a family but the Lord has not yet blessed us in this way. I don’t really want a big big family but I was I always thought like five children would be nice. I always loved teaching people new things, so it would give me a chance to teach somebody. So while we wait for God to grant us our dearest wish, we’ll share the values that are passed from father to son and mother to daughter with the British teenagers instead. I guess living the homage will be an adventure in itself. Being able to live in a society which is so kind of insular and such an archaic system, will be just very interesting to see and take on board, like, their way of life and how it can have an impact on me. So, yeah. I’ve got my sunglasses. Where’s my hair texturiser? I don’t actually know much about the Amish because they keep it to themselves, so not much is known. I’m a Christian, but I’m at a stage where I’m really questioning my faith. Staying with the Amish would hopefully reinstate my faith, or maybe even, you know, I might even change my mind completely about God, you know? I’m Hannah. I’m Sienna, nice to meet you. Hi, I’m Charlotte, nice to meet you. Hello. I’ll be good, OK? I will be good. I’m happy to hear the Amish views and a lot of things, but I just don’t really want to have someone preaching at me all day about the woes of my life in sin. I’m coming! Well, I’ve got to go now. Oh, my God! There’s a buggy! Oh, my God! I’ve got the words. Their house is so nice. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. Hello. Hi, I’m Sienna. Okay, I’m Jonathan. Hello, Jonathan, nice to meet you. I’m Marietta. Hello, Marietta, nice to meet you. When they walked through the door, I seen some of them had pierc… piercings and tattoos. Generally in our country, people that have piercings and tattoos seem kind of more wild, I guess you could say. So that made me a little bit more nervous because I didn’t know what to expect out of that. I sit here and my head sits here, so this is our house. But this week, we want you to feel that it’s also your house. There’s a couple things that I like to keep kind of rules. Try not to cuss. If the women yell, dinner’s ready, that means quit working. When we eat a meal, we say a silent grace, and then after the meal, we do the same thing. before anybody gets up. Anyway, yeah, okay. These teenagers are about to discover that every part of Amish life is governed by a set of rules called the Ordinum, laid down by the church to help us live a simple, godly life separate from the rest of the world. Everything is regulated, from how we do business to the way we date. The Ordinum helps unify us as a community. And this is most obvious in the laws relating to the way we dress. Here we are. Like all Amish men, the boys will wear plain cotton shirts and unbelted trousers. with no pleats or cuffs. Those will be stiff because they’re not washed. To keep their pants up, they’ll wear suspenders. And to complete the outfit, they’ll wear a hat with a brim no wider than three inches. How does it look? The reason we have only three buttons like this is if we have buttons all the way down, then it’s too tempting to open them up. You know, first it’ll be one button, then it’ll be two buttons. Pretty soon you’ll have your shirt open all the way down here on a really hot day. I think it’s a good thing that we dress the way we do, all on the same level. That way you don’t have somebody rich wearing expensive clothes where you’d have somebody that’s not rich. wearing clothes that aren’t of the top line. There you go. There you go. Wear a top in the pool. Hannah, Sienna, and Charlotte must also shed their inappropriate English clothes and wear simple dresses that emphasize their beauty. modesty not fashion. I really like the color it’s like 1950s style kind of retro vintage. Pretty awesome. Okay I’m gonna have to ask you to remove all your jewelry because we don’t wear jewelry. Take our stuff off now. I was wondering whether I could leave this on just just because I got this done recently. No, I have to take this off again. As it says in Timothy 2, women should not adorn themselves with gold or pearls. Amish women hand make their dresses and everything has to be just so. The sleeves must reach the elbow and the hems be no higher than six inches from their feet. This is so weird. Pins are used for fastening. We have to avoid the temptation of fancy buttons. I look like a plain Jane. And I’m not. I’m crazy Charlotte. Did you be crazy? I’m not. I’m crazy. Amish ladies wear a bonnet. Okay, I don’t know about that though. You see, the Bible tells us that a woman’s head should be covered at all times. And this shows our respect to our dear Lord. Oh my… That’s so gross. Just not. You look so different. Like about 150 years ago. I just feel like it makes it look very uninteresting and it’s the bonnet. I think I hate the bonnet the most out of everything. I hate it. It doesn’t even fit right. But I don’t really like the bonnet. I think that’s the worst part of the whole look. I don’t really like the bonnet. I think that’s the worst part of the whole look. We Old Order Amish don’t have electricity, as we believe it offers up the temptation of worldly goods. Okay, I want you to give me all your electronical things. Camera. Camera. My iPod. That’s interesting. Do you want to try it out? No, I’d better not. Now, I’d heard that the English teenagers might be fond of their electrical devices, but I was unprepared for quite the amount. that they brought with them. I think I could be honest on this one and say I’ve got another phone. Two phones? Which I could have happily just took, but I should do this, be honest. We’ll take good care of them. Our strong work ethic has kept us Amish alive in America for nearly 300 years. When you’re tilling the land, growing the food you eat, and building your own home, everyone needs to know their job. and do their share. So the men take on the farming, logging, and construction, while the women gather food, look after our homes, and raise our children. It’s a way of life that has let our communities thrive here in America, regardless of the changes to the rest of the nation. So for Charlotte and the other English girls, learning how the house is laid out is of vital importance. Beans that we’re gonna make tonight. Ah! And this is salmon. Is that salmon? We’re gonna make salmon patties. How long has that been in there? Probably two years. Wow. Do you ever have takeaways? Like a Chinese takeaway or an Indian takeaway? No? While Marietta gets the girls going on the evening meal, I get the boys out to the barn to introduce them to the other members of our family. Her name is Chippy. Long stockings. For us Amish, horses are essential to our existence. We need them to work hard for us, so we make sure they’re well cared for. Today my kid brother Nathan’s come over to lend a hand. James. So yeah, basically take the shovel, load the mower onto the wheelbarrow, and wheelbarrow it out. I’m going to shovel this shit. I’ve never really had to work before so like the whole sort of getting into doing the manual stuff is quite new to me. James you sure you don’t want to… I’m positive. You alright? I’ve got a sensitive nose, I’m not in trouble. We’re in, we’re in, they’re giving us the eye. I’m a college dropout. I dropped out of college and I’m not too sure if I’m going to go back yet. I’m quite happy to just do nothing and just sort of chill. You’re checking out her toes or something? I’m just checking out her arse. I couldn’t read or write until I was about nine. And then I got caught smoking. And I got grounded for a whole month. I sat in my bedroom doing nothing. And I found a Harry Potter book. And then I actually taught myself how to read. In that month, I think I got through about three pages. I wasn’t too good. It took me over a year to finish it. It wasn’t because I was dyslexic or nothing, it’s just I hadn’t sort of been installed on me properly. I should actually stop talking to you. Is it? You actually talk utter shit. And you don’t. I reckon I just sort of tried along in life, sort of having fun. what we’re going to do here, James, this is barn drive. You just go along and spread across the whole barn. James, he seems more of the reluctant one. He didn’t know how to pick up a shovel, or much less how to properly handle a shovel, which is quite unheard of in the Amish community. We learn how to handle shovels quite early on in our life. Once the barn’s clean, there’s a couple tons of firewood that needs bringing in to feed the water heater. Unless the boys want to be taking cold showers, that is. And then just put it in one piece at a time. There you go. As easy as that. OK, well, I think go out and get some more wood. OK. Do you dip this in that after to get the bubbles off? Ah, OK. These are washing gloves. I never ever wash up. How did you get away with that? I got away with not washing up due to the fact that my parents just do it for me. They don’t nag. From an early age they haven’t told me to go and pick up a sponge. and wash the plates, so I never have. There’s your sandwich knife. Yeah. The last time I did some housework, I can’t really remember, to be honest. I’m usually out doing stuff, so I don’t really have time to come back and kind of do chores for Mum. It’s a really bright blue. I’m quite cross with myself for not making her do anything around the house because I don’t think she’s really learnt a very good lesson. Everything gets done for you. I do like just sitting back and relaxing and having my mum bring cups of tea to me on tap. It’s quite nice. There. Done. Ta-da! It’s really bad saying that. I feel really horrible and like I don’t help around, but I suppose it’s just the way I am. So, is cooking what you mainly do around the house, or… this is your main thing? Mm-hm. So, how long do you work for? Pretty much just the dawn. I’m always doing something. Don’t you get bored? Don’t you just want to, like, chill out? No matter what we’re doing, come 7 p.m., we put our tools aside and come together to eat supper. David, if you want to sit here. Tonight, our friends David and Rhoda have dropped in to say hi. I guess we’ll say a quick prayer. Okay, so the way we do it, you might do it a little bit different at home, but once the food touches your plate, dig in. You do not have to wait on anybody. because you won’t get enough. That is canned hamburger and also the hobo beans. I think the reason they’re called hobo beans is because they’re like a bunch of stuff thrown together. Oh. It’s gonna be hard doing washing up every day for five weeks. Well, you have to wash them up with the bubbles, then you have, like, a separate bowl to get the bubbles off, and then you have to dry it. But you’ve just got to get used to it, I suppose. Yeah. I don’t really have any words to describe it as yet, because it’s just unbelievably bizarre and so different. I just… I’m trying to take it all in. The main thing I’m feeling right now is tired. I’m not really used to this much work. Around here we like to get up around 5 a.m. to give us the best run of the day. Puma! Ready to get up? Once everyone has finished their chores, I figured it’s time to rig up Chippy’s long stocking and give the teens their first ride in a buggy. Driving a buggy helps us to preserve our own pace of life. Moving at an average of 8 miles an hour means we rarely go far, keeping us away from those big cities and all their temptation. Our buggies come in all shapes and sizes, depending on who owns them. like my neighbour David who’s helping me out by being a taxi service for the English today. Usually the young people have a buggy like this. Do you sort of upgrade your buggies very often and get new ones? No, I’ll probably have this thing the rest of my life. Yeah? Is that because they’re quite expensive? Yeah, they’re expensive. How much is it sort of like for a buggy like this one? I gave about over £5,000 for it. What are the things at the top? I got lights up there. Yeah. And I got lights beside the buggy. Then I got four lights up there, they’re blue. They’re blue? Why do you have them? That’s not a legal equipment, is it? I think it’s actually brighter. You can actually see more of the road. So is that the only reason you have them? I got them for that. You didn’t get them to impress girls? Maybe a little bit. A little bit. It really was like going back in time. I didn’t expect it to go that fast. It’s almost like a Land Rover but with a horse on it instead. It goes well off road. I’m not going to get one, but they’re good. OK, well, are we going to get ready to go? You go fishing? Yeah. Sure thing. I’ve been fishing since I was five, and this pond is one of my favorite places to enjoy the peace and the beauty of God’s creation. Get a worm. And then take care. Cool. Okay, like that. Then you cast. It’s five pounds like per hour. It’s like top of the minimum. Yeah, but just because I don’t need power, I just want a bit of money. There’s one thing I would like to explain to the teenagers is that when I fish, it’s not as noisy. It seems to me they’re concentrating more on talking amongst themselves and having fun. Wind the bobbin up, wind the bobbin up. Oh, they’re not wild, wild, wild. Whoa. That was insane. I think they need to quiet down and really hear the crickets and the birds and just enjoy and relax, you know. Okay, so when I come fishing, I like it quiet. So we’re gonna try to be quiet for like an hour. That’s cool. Easy. I like setting the table. I think that’s pretty exciting. Kind of. I’ll give you a worm if you whisper. Sorry. Can we get a drink as well? My voice just travels, I can’t do anything about it. Even my whisper’s loud. Although it’s nice and peaceful, I have found myself just sort of sitting there and in my mind I’m thinking, if I was at home I’d be doing this, I’d be doing that. I’d be on my phone and my laptop really. I’m not really missing those things but I just feel it’s all a bit too quiet for me. The pace of life’s a bit too slow. It’s a nice silence, it’s like, you can sort of hear the birds and stuff. It’s sort of quite new to me. At home, like, there’s always something on, more like a TV or something, more because I’m on my own a lot. It’s all a bit boring and stuff, sort of just sitting in silence. There’s always something on in the background to break the silence. For the last year, I’ve been living in a hostel in North London. It’s quite lonely. You spend a lot of time on your own. It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s just… It gets quite lonely as well. This is where everything goes down, really. This is… the kitchen and the bathroom. This is like the closest thing to cooking that I do. My mum landed in prison and basically the steam sort of cooks it. It does the job, it fills the gap. When I was 14, my mum was arrested for arson. The charges were dropped by then. Me and my brothers didn’t have nowhere to go. So, I was too young to look after them and anything. And they went to live with their nan. I moved on into foster care, and from there, I moved on to the hospital. Life, as I knew it, just disappeared. I did actually prefer it, though, living in care, just for living on my own. It’s more homely, like, living with other people. It’s always like sitting down and watching TV and stuff together. Instead of like, so like watching on your own and that. Fish! Oh, it’s a big one! After just half an hour of silence, the teens start reaping the rewards. High five! How big is the biggest fish you’ve caught down there? Not this big. Oh really? Yeah! Woo! Since they have quite… We have caught more fish and I think they are relaxing and enjoying it more. Whoa! That’s amazing! H is for one, V is one for the men. Oh, this is too funny! The English teenagers have only been here for a few days, but already their rooms look like a twister’s gone through it. Marietta thinks it’s high time that Charlotte learned the pleasures that come from the daily chores. Okay, so I guess we’re going to do laundry today? OK. Me and you. Are you going to get everything together, all your laundry? Yeah, I will actually. What do you wash, like, hands and everything? You probably notice how clean my house is. Yeah, it’s beautiful. Just like the . be organised. I do it daily, like a routine. That’s where I go wrong. I have no organisation whatsoever in my life because my mum does it all for me. So I just haven’t learnt. Wow, this looks pretty technical. What do you call it, a washing machine? Now, I said we didn’t use electricity, but we are allowed to run a generator to power some of our appliances, and we call this Amish electricity. So you just pop them in? Yeah. Just pop them in. Ooh! You like it? Yeah, it’s really funky! It’s really different! You have to like… Do stuff to the clothes, like kind of… Yeah. You just leave it? Just like squeeze it a little bit. When Marietta said that I was going to be doing the laundry, I was quite sceptical and I thought it would be quite a boring chore and I wouldn’t really want to do it. But as soon as I started, seeing how organised she is, it was just really lovely to see that. I know that she’s done it every day for ages and ages, but she still is really enthusiastic about it. OK, now let’s go and hang them up. Oh, I hope it dries. Never in a million years would I have thought that I’d get so enthusiastic about washing. Now, turn it around. Yeah, like that. It was actually really fun and really, like, tranquil and relaxing to just check out your washing, which is quite surreal and weird, but, no, it was really lovely. There, see? You can do it. Why did you really want to come here and see how we live? Back at home, I find it so complicated. I feel you have to make this major effort to feel accepted in a way. If you look better, people will appreciate you more. Sometimes I still don’t feel happy when I’ve got all this fashion and make-up on. It’s just I feel like I have to wear it sometimes, so… So you don’t feel left out. Yeah. We’ve… We try to not get overweight and stuff like that too, because we feel the same way if people look at us. We would never mock anybody or, I mean, I hope I never do that. See, I wish our society was like that. Even at night time there’s always something to keep us Amish men busy. You ready to get your shoes wet? Ooh, there’s a big crayfish. Like hunting for crayfish. They only look for food at night, so that’s the best time to try and catch them. There he goes. Hey! Got him. I thought James might like to come and join me, as I guess he wouldn’t get to do this in the city. Ooh, quite wiggly, huh? So how do you feel about Amish living now? I think the stuff… that you do is really enjoyable. It’s an adventure, huh? Yeah, it is. I was wondering what you do for fun, James. What, for fun? Yeah, you and your buddies? A lot of the time, mostly just out. It sounds like we’re doing nothing, but we’re all just talking a lot. Yeah. And we’re all in a sort of big group. And then if anything does decide to pop up, we’ll just do that. Yeah. To an extent, it feels quite dangerous. Is it? Whereas around here you can freely wander. In London, you can’t really do that, because there’s sort of, like, a lot of youth violence, like, the violence between youths. Oh, yeah? It’s like, a lot of people see it as, you’re from that sort of zip code area, so dash your territory and it can sort of kick off, which is quite scary, really, in the fact that people are willing to sort of give up their lives for, like, a petty thing. I think… I think James, he never had the privileges like some youths did. I think his feelings could be easily hurt. He just seems that type of guy. I like James a lot. He’s one of those people that can hold a special place in your heart. A turtle. I’ll climb it. It’ll bite you. Ooh, watch it, James, watch it. It’ll bite you, it’ll bite you. Yeah, it definitely bit me. Jonathan, he’s just a really, really cool guy. Wow. See that? I think if him and Mariel ever do have kids, I think he would be a very, very good dad. Like, he’s very understanding, very patient. He’s just a cool guy in general. Think we should turn him loose now? Ooh. There he goes. You might have to pull pretty hard. Although it’s customary to dress plainly, there are some occasions where something more formal is required. This afternoon the girls are going to visit my Aunt Irma, so Mariette and Rhoda are teaching them how to make aprons and bonnet strings for their outfits. And same time as you’re moving your foot. That’s awesome! Yeah! Rhoda is hoping to get married soon and like every Amish bride-to-be, takes pleasure from her sewing. I’ve heard that some Amish women don’t kiss or hold hands. There are Amish people that are like that. One of my friends, she sees her boyfriend weekends, but there’s absolutely no kissing, no holding hands, nothing like that. Do you think that’s strange? For me it is because I wouldn’t be able to tell if there’s a chemistry between me and Dave. And for me, I’d like to have a chemistry to be able to see if… I’m gonna have a good marriage or not. Without going into too many details, would you make out? Is that too over the top? No. For me and Dave, sex and all that, there’s a line. I mean, we’re not supposed to have sex before you get married. That’s something that you want to see before your marriage. But kissing, that’s perfectly fine. OK, I use it. Pull a little bit down and then I go like this. It’s one cross? Yeah. I did expect that I’d have to do all the women’s work and dress a certain way, but I think, although I expected it, it still doesn’t stop it being a massive shock. Do you not ever get curious about what it would be like to just maybe step out of the box slightly? No. You know, you’ve been raised this way and that’s how it is for you, but have you never wanted to play around with your hair and leave it out and do stuff with it? Not at all. No. I think here I feel a big chunk of me has disappeared. I think I’d go nuts if this was my life. I think it’s fair to say that I’m a person who likes to be seen and heard. And I’ve got a lot of opinions and I dress a certain way and I kind of just do my own thing. Hi, my name’s Sienna Ben-Gurren and I have a fashion blog and I think you look very, very stylish. And then there’s my… making it into a journalism blog. And then I’ve got a third blog, which is just completely full of me ranting about whatever’s going on in the world, everything from politics to how much I hate my shoes that day. I originate from Sierra Leone. I was actually born there and I came over here when I was about two. My mum, she raised three children completely on her own and times were really hard. So I think I feel everything that’s happening a lot. I’ve already fought this whole like Traditional men have their place and women have their place. I think that we should be able to stand side by side and, like, achieve the same things. So, yes, I would say I’m definitely a modern lady. Now you look like you’re ready to go somewhere. Mm-hm. Yeah. Few things are more important to us than going and visiting friends and family. This is just amazing. This afternoon… the girls are joining my Aunt Irma in what the ladies call a canning frolic, where women join together to make the chores more fun. Hi, I’m Irma. Welcome to our home. It’s fair to say Irma’s not exactly a typical Amish woman. As a teenager, she left the community altogether, got married, had a bunch of kids, and spent 18 years in the other world. But eventually, she found herself drawn back to Amish life. We’re gonna make pickles. I had to cut them up yesterday because I had to soak them overnight in a briny thing and so today we’re going to can the pickles. And Irma just adds water, vinegar, sugar and spice and her homegrown pickles will last all winter. And once it starts to cook the house just smells heavenly. How full do you want it? All the way to like to the rim. I learned how to can when I was a child. Helping my mother can fruit. We would sit outside and we would go and pick all the string beans and the peas. When my mom used to can with us we got a closeness. You shared and you learned. You get this bonding that you’re, I guess, like a nurturing. It’s preserving your relationship and you’re preserving your food. So it’s pretty good. Pour it in there. I grew up with four sisters. I think we give my mother a lot of sleepless nights but we are very close. We can talk to mom about anything. She’s understanding, she listens and sometimes I know when you’re a teenager you think, oh you have no idea what I’m talking about. They do. Some of this tree, you get the contrasting color. Find a nice one. There you go. Oh, beautiful, huh? I was wondering what were the main positive things about being an Amish person did you miss and perhaps they were the things that drew you back here what were they? I think that the the bonding that you have and that you know that I knew that if something happened to me that the whole church family would be there as a group to help support me and and that meant a lot. I think I’m struggling most really with the whole idea of being put in a box and I do feel like a lot of my Individuality has been taken away and that’s partly due to the clothes, the bonnet. Do you know why we all dress the same? So that we’re not singled out. We stand as a group. We stand as a whole. And I feel like an individual, but I’m part of the whole. Like you said, you said you feel like an individual, okay. I don’t feel like an individual. Like I try not to invest too much in clothes and stuff like that, you know, obviously it’s just clothes. But I feel that that stuff is part of who I am. Right. And what makes me be who I am. So if all of that makes sense, so yeah. Yes it does. That’s how I get around it. For my sleepwear I wear t-shirts and my shorts. Um, because that’s who I am. I like to wear t-shirts and shorts. And so if I can only wear it when I go to bed, that’s fine. At least I can do that. But you’re hiding it away though. Yeah, but that doesn’t, but I, but it doesn’t bother me. Yeah? No. It’s because it’s just superficial. Trust me, I am as old as I am. It took me a long time to get to this point. It really did. It really did. Rough journey, eh? It was a rough journey. Look at my hair. Wow, you could combine. I mean, I’ve got a bonnet on. That’s one thing we don’t ever have, bad hair days. OK, that is good. I found Irma really inspirational. And she doesn’t seem to think she is, but I’ve felt really, really good speaking to her. I’m gonna miss you girls. No, it’s so nice to see you. You really touched my heart. One thing I really, really respect is the sense of community. And I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that before. And I don’t think I ever will. Thank you. Everybody’s looked after and everybody’s part of this big family and every single person is important. And I completely get why she came back to that safety. And I understand why some people don’t leave that safety. I’m so glad to meet you girls. Thank you so, so much. Thank you for coming. Thank you. and helping me make pickles. You might have noticed that we Amish men have pretty distinct haircuts, straight all the way around the head and halfway down the ears. It’s another way to help us feel that we’re part of a community. As it’s the teenagers’ last day with us, I’d like the boys to feel like they’re part of our community too. How’s it looking guys? A bit younger. Younger? Yeah. It’s a lot better. I think it’s known as a bowl haircut. Yeah, but you do it very well. Does it look better? Yeah. What do you think? It’s kind of a haircut. It’s nice and neat. If I had long hair, I wish I could have a haircut and make it look like that. Would you? Mmm. What about you? Not sure you would. I’m not sure if I’ve got the right head for it. I think you’ve got quite a nice shaped head for that haircut. Not sure if I was… wouldn’t want to do it unjustly. I think James… I don’t think he takes my time, but you’re allowed to hurt. In the end, the boys all decided to get in the chair. I just know they’re gonna love this. I must say, he’s a very brave man. LAUGHTER MUSIC PLAYS Wow, you are looking very good. Yeah, this is amazing. Okay, I think you’re done. Here we go. Are you sure? Yeah. Okay with it? Yeah, yeah, go for it. Okay, must say James, your hair looks good. I don’t know if you’ll agree with me or not. Hey. How are you doing? Does anything look different? Yeah, the hair. Oh, he’s on it. Can you take your hat off, please? Oh, you did it! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, my God! I’m so proud of you. I think the real thing is Jonathan’s had his cut. Oh! See? Why exactly did you get your hair cut like Jonathan’s? At the beginning of the week, I thought I made a joke saying that if… If everyone else was to get their cut, I still wouldn’t get mine cut. But then the week sort of went on and I started to respect Jonathan and really grateful for what he’s done for us, him and my mate also. And I thought that the hair to me is sort of who I am, really. It’s like I’m always known for having a long lion’s mane type hair. And I thought it’d be nice to sort of pay back that respect in hair. It sounds quite weird, but to sort of adopt an Amish hairstyle, food. would be a good sign of a thank you. Aw. Really, that’s all to pay back for what you’ve done for us. Aw, sorry. I appreciate it. That’s all right, man. Don’t make me do it again. Yeah. Don’t cry. Please don’t. Oh, you don’t cry. Aw. Check me out. I’ll miss you, buddy. Last evening sun, is sinking low, a few more days, and I’m falling in love with you. Did you do it like this? And then you kind of like this. Oh, you folded it. I think Charlotte touched me the most. When I was teaching her how to clean up and do laundry and how to tidy her room, it did not bother her to do it. She was more than willing to do it. Should I show you how I do that? Oh yeah, possibly would be quite a good idea at least. Yes. There it is. I felt like I taught her something. And I think it won’t bother her as much when she goes home, not to wear makeup and go out and face people. There are few greater signs of friendship than to invite someone to a cookout. The teenagers have become almost like family to us, so I couldn’t think of a better way to mark their last night. It’s been quite the week. Busy. And we had some fun too, I guess. Lots of fun, actually. On behalf of all of us, I think I’d just like to say a huge thank you, because it’s been amazing. The past week has been pretty much unbelievable for all of us. how amazingly kind and generous and welcoming you have been. I think on a personal level, something I’ve learnt, it’s just the satisfaction of hard graft. Marietta? words can’t describe really how amazing you are. And I actually came on this experience to get belief in myself and that you’ve already, ha ha ha, Oh, no, again. And you’ve just taught me just how to do stuff that I never thought I’d be able to do. So, thank you so much, thank you. Well, I would like to. To answer everybody’s thank you, I guess, with a, um, you’re welcome. I’m out of many words. I honestly can say that we couldn’t have picked a better group of people to be with. I feel even though you are halfway across the world or wherever, If you do come to a point in your life where you might be in a bind, I do truly hope that you won’t be afraid to contact us in any way. And we will try to do everything in our power to help you. Our English friends leave us today, but for them the Amish journey is only just beginning. They’re off to stay with another family where they do things a little differently. But I know they’ll do just fine since a piece of our hearts will always be with them. Ever since we Amish settled in America nearly 300 years ago, work has been at the heart of our way of life. And many of us choose to make a living working with wood. We think it’s a noble craft. It helps us stay close to nature. And of course, Jesus was a carpenter. So our six new English friends are going to gain some work experience with two families whose livelihoods are bound up with wood. I think the guys are going to actually work really, really hard this week. He sleeps everywhere. He’s like a sloth. By the end of the week, they’ll join us in the time-honored tradition of raising a barn. The first to put them to work are the Schlebaus, who have a family-run furniture business in Holmes County, Ohio. Hi, I’m Eddie. Jordan. Jordan. Hi, I’m George. You’re George? Hi, Cheryl. Hi, Cheryl. Yeah, we’ll start with the little guys. This one’s Sheila. This is Elisa. Caleb. Eric. Kevin in the red shirt. And Christine. You know, you’re in an Amish home, so it’s going to be different. You know TVs, the radio’s not blaring. And we get up quite early in the morning. We’ll have breakfast at 2 a.m. I’m just kidding. No! Wowzer. Why do we wear headscarves when it’s usually a capsule? It’s lighter and it’s not as warm and it cleans easier. I think so. Ah cool, I like that. They do makeovers well. Once they’ve changed into our kind of clothes, they’re ready for a good day’s work. Is it a male only work environment? Female and male. Yep. Wow! Yep. We’re an equal opportunity employer, yeah. Don’t touch anything that looks flat. We Amish have earned a good reputation for making things with wood. And Eddie runs a busy workshop that adds the finishing touches to handcrafted Amish furniture. Very hands on, isn’t it? Cut it right next to the screw. That screw pops out. I don’t want you, like, dropping them into the box, cos they’ll scratch. I’ve got a lot of respect for them for working so hard. They do work really, really hard. It’s just not… You know… I like relaxing. I’d describe myself as lazy but motivated. If I can sit down, I’ll sit down. I like sitting down. In the mornings, give me half an hour before we chit-chat. I live in West Sussex, along with my mum. I’m most alive at night. I like going out to meet people and girls are sort of like a good type of people to meet. I’m at the sort of point in my life I can either start university in September or I can take a job and I got offered a job in music PR. I’m not lazy in the way that you know I won’t pull my own load. If I need to do something I do it but I can appreciate a good lie down and a good sleep. They are hard-working people. They’re very hard-working, very fast-paced. They are like ants. They’re just content. You can tell they haven’t been born and raised on a dairy farm or in the country, but that’s why they’re here. We like to stick together, so many of us run family businesses, working side by side with the people we love. I think it’s important to work together like that, to have my father and my son and my mother and my aunt working. It teaches. great values to my children. I’m opening the drawer to put on those drawers. I’m going to use these right away. Kevin’s an old hand. He’s 13 and been helping out in his father’s workshop since he was 10. So Kevin, do you sort of do this to earn a bit of pocket money? Yes. How do you balance it with school? I do my homeschool work and then I come out and shop. Who teaches you, your mom or your sisters? My mom. Quite a few of us are homeschooled, and we all finish our schooling at the age of 14. We feel that by then, we’ve learned all we need to live a simple and modest life, and that life’s most valuable lessons are best taught outside the classroom. Smooth, smooth. I was really surprised to see a 13-year-old working, working at all, especially working in an environment like that, to be honest, where quite a lot of physical work. I’m 19 and I haven’t really had a proper, proper job. It puts me to shame a little bit, but then I also think that I don’t know if someone that young should be working. At this point in time, I’m a student at Cambridge. This is Peterhouse College, my college. Oh, I want to see the Trinity Hall queues. Everyone’s going to be at that. Oh, I have a radio show, Camerfan Breakthrough. Good evening, Cambridge. This summer, guys, your presenter will be going to America to live with the Amish. You know, I’m from a humble background. Times are really hard. I’ve made it this far, and it’s through a lot of hard work. A lot of hard work? For me, I felt that… University was the way. As long as you’re educated really well in something, you’ll be fine. I think education is a really, really powerful, powerful tool. You’ve got to hold it straight. Hold it straight. And put a little bit of pressure on it and hit your train. Good. Woo! I’m loving it! I got to use a drill. I felt very powerful, almost manly in fact. It’s just very stimulating. It’s far more stimulating than domestic chores, quite frankly. I know it needs to be done, but I’d rather be in the shop working. Yeah, go on then. Woo! I see a lot of you. Like many of us, the Shleboz are three generations under one roof. And tonight, the whole family have come together for a welcome cookout. We love to be with friends and family and find time to reflect on the blessings of the day. There probably is a good reason to get up early even if you’re not doing anything, but I’m yet to find it. What time do you get up? At school I get up at like 7.30, but at home I get up at like 11 or 1 o’clock. How could you? That’s nuts. You should try it. No, I have no desire to do that. If I sleep past 7, my day is wasted. Oh really? It’s junk. By now you’re probably getting the idea that we like to devote ourselves to God. Our families and a life of hard work. But when it comes to work, lots of outside folk find it strange that we get started so young. I spent some time in your shop today and I really, really enjoyed myself. But I was thinking about it afterwards and I reckon it’s just because it’s a novelty to me. Amish teenagers finish school really, really early. At the age of 14. Yeah, and I wanted to know why that is the case. We go to school. And we learn the basic skills in life and I’m not opposed to higher education. I think it’s great and I think there’s a need for it, but I don’t think everybody needs it. For me, it’s always been that education is the most important thing. I think education is overrated in a sense with some people. I worked with people that went to college. without direction, without a vision, and I’d ask them, why’d you go to college? And I’d hear, well, mom and dad paid for it. I can’t support that. Uh-huh, I agree with you. That’s a free ride to a party. There’s nothing wrong with going to university not necessarily knowing concrete what the final outcome will be, but I think it’s wrong to go if you’re not bothered. I support my children. Mm. I don’t give them a lot of handouts. I want them to support themselves, too. Tomorrow morning, it’s a five o’clock wake-up call, something stupid. A five anything is a number that I only want to see in the afternoon. Good morning. The break of day seems to be something our young British friends don’t see very often. Good morning, guys. Jordan and George. Yeah, I’m all right. No, you’re not. You will be. Time to get up. Let’s go. If you miss the early mornings, you miss the greatest part of the day. I couldn’t imagine not getting up and working hard. I love it. But before they start a long day in the factory, Eddie, as the head of the household, leads them all in prayer. We’ll have a brief devotion, and then our day is rolling. the runner In an earthly race does not carry unnecessary baggage. In the spiritual race, we must get rid of excess weight that would slow us down. I’m a people who love getting up early. I’m just not really an early morning sort of person. I don’t actually feel asleep when I shut my eyes, I just rest them. The Bible tells us that those who work hard will prosper and be satisfied, while the lazy will want much but get little. My hair’s gonna get all messed up. There you go, now start. Is this your job then? Yeah, this is what I do all day. Every day? Are you sure you don’t get bored of doing this? Well, sometimes when I can’t talk to the people I get bored, but… Eddie’s daughter Chrissy is 15 and has been working in the workshop since she left school last year. So what’s your violence do you like? Well this morning I was out here at 5.15. I’m gonna do it! I got these instead of actually having a horse, which was quite annoying. I asked my mum for a horse and then Budgie’s turned up. Shopping is a big thing in my life. I could go shopping every day. I love it. Oh, it goes with your shoes as well. This one’s funky. My mum and dad help out a lot, cos I always ask them for money, and they do give it to me, cos they’re amazing parents. Am I giving you the money for these? Yeah. Bye-bye. Thanks very much. Bye. It’s quite a lot to spend on make-up, isn’t it? But it doesn’t matter, Mum. Like, I work for that make-up, don’t I? Charlotte works part-time alongside her dad in a pub. Patsy! Sha! Breakfast ready! I don’t do any chores really. I hate to admit it. I’d love to try and help my parents out because they do so much for me, literally everything. So I feel quite bad. I don’t think I give work in there all the time. They seem to work pretty hard. It doesn’t really interest me, that sort of work. I know it has to be done but it’s really not my thing being stuck inside a warehouse. So do you have jobs back home? I don’t know if you’d call it a job, but I’m a street performer, so I sing on the street and earn money that way. I work at a country pub, like, just one evening a week, and then I’m off to university to do music theatre. Do you guys enjoy this job? I really like it here. It took time getting used to it, but… Yeah, the dirty parts. Yeah. If you guys were to get married, would you have to work less or…? We would get married and probably just work at home, same as Cheryl. Would you find that difficult to have to do? So I know for me, I couldn’t personally do it. No, that would be OK. Yeah, that would be fun then, to get married and be at home with my husband, lots of kids. Not lots of them, but… Yeah. So you guys wouldn’t mind at all, like, just giving it all up? Yeah. OK. See you. It’s different. They’re forced to, in a way, not be very simple. We’re forced to live complex lives. And I don’t think we enjoy it, necessarily. There has to be some sort of happy medium somewhere. We don’t have radios and TVs. So after a hard day’s work, we enjoy the simple pleasures of a country life. With separate activities, for boys and girls of course. What’s that? It’s to retrieve if you guys hit a fish. Every good father will teach his son how to fish. When you see a fish, you pull your bow and you follow the fish. And you don’t stop when you release. When you’re following that fish, you just keep swinging. You guys roller blade? Oh, you have fancy ones. I got them for my birthday. Yay! Now just walk like you got shoes on. I’m not sure who bought the first pair of rollerblades, but I’ve been told that you can go twice as fast as a horse and buggy. Sienna? Better not. I’m fine though. Yeah, don’t get close to the bank Eric, you’ll scare them. I think the water’s a bit murky at the moment. You see it? I still see it. We’ve got a tough night. As well as helping out at home, once they’re earning a wage, we expect our children to contribute to the family income. A lot of Amish children, as they start working, they get 10% of their paycheck, so the 90% would go to their parents. Really? What sort of rate does Chrissy get? She gets $1 an hour. For every hour she works, she gets $1. What would you think about that, I mean, if you get $1 an hour? You’d be cheated, right? I don’t… I thought Chrissy would get more than that, actually, due to the fact that the hours that she does. I don’t think I could work for that amount of money, to be honest. What do young adults do with their paycheck? I tend to, as soon as I get my wages, spend it on unnecessary things, really, like clothes and make-up. I don’t contribute to food or anything. You just get a free ride, huh? Yeah, basically. You have it easy. It hadn’t crossed my mind that I should pay for my living. No, I’ve never given it a thought at all. I’ve always, you know, been there and haven’t had to pay any money towards the cost of living, so no thoughts of that have come into my mind at all. As I was… growing up I didn’t get a paycheck as on a regular basis my dad wasn’t wealthy and we had lots of children like 12 children and he needed our paycheck so you know hard work never killed anybody it’s good for him it’s good for the soul and the mentality for someone I feel selfish, personally, for the fact that my mum and dad do pay a lot for me. Now I’m 18 years of age now, and perhaps I should be supporting myself a little bit more. Our work ethics have built a strong community and strong businesses. We may not be the smartest people in the world, but we do have good work ethics and good moral values. We’re heading off to our new family today. Eddie said it would be exciting. Thank you very much for having us. Hello, Eddie. Hello. I spoke to Eddie specifically about education and, you know, he was only educated up to age 14. I can’t imagine leaving school so early. Not sure what I would take with me, really, but… I don’t think Eddie is any less of a success because of that. The teens understand discipline and hard work may be a bit different from what we understand it, but growing up with it, I guess we don’t think of it as discipline and hard work. It’s our way of life. We Amish do like to help our neighbor, so when someone needs a new barn, we all pull together. We call it a barn raising, and it’s one of our most cherished events. Our six British guests are on their way to family in Coshocton County, where they’re in for a real treat. Hi and welcome to the Miller farm. Okay, I’m Erin. I’m Hannah. This is my lovely wife Irene. In three days’ time, the Millers will raise a new barn with the help of the local community, and our six British friends are here to lend a hand. The boys will be helping put together this barn with big white oak timbers. What do the girls do as part of this? Cooking, baking, making dinner rolls, bread. bread Whatever’s there to do in the kitchen. She’s beautiful. It seems that I’m going to spend most of my time indoors in the kitchen. Kitchen’s probably my least favorite room in the whole house. That’s the only thing I’m a bit disappointed about, but Irene seems lovely. Nice to meet you, Jordan. Hi, George. George, nice to meet you. James. So this is where it all happens. Aaron’s brother Johnny runs a timber workshop where they’re crafting the huge oak joists for the barn. Mastering the skills to work timber this way can take a lifetime, and we like to hand this knowledge down from generation to generation. This is Andrew, the father. He’s 73, works every day. And this is Andrew, my second son. He just graduated this spring. Jordan, George, and James are put to work chiseling the joints of the oak beams, which have to fit together just right. Andrew made it look pretty easy. Andrew made it look very easy. That’s a classic kind of misconception. If it just comes up, tilt your chisel. I think maybe you guys should come work for us. In the kitchen, Irene is showing Charlotte, Hannah, and Sienna the important part the ladies play in a barn maze. The other flower that we have. This here means home. I’m really excited about Friday, actually. Well, so you would have 80 people just outside your house? That’s including everybody. Women, children, and everybody. As far as just men, it’s going to be a good 40. Do women ever help? No, women do not help with the barn raising. They help by preparing the food. Something I haven’t quite got my head around, really. How come you are so comfortable doing all the domestic work? Probably because it goes down to generation to generation. But in Titus 2 in the Bible, it says, The role of a woman is supposed to be the keeper of the home. We’re supposed to be the weaker vessel. For me, I think God created us equally. He made us very different, but also with similar strengths. And I don’t think that because we’re women, we should necessarily, you know, because we have children, necessarily be put into one box and said, you know, you have to do this and men have to do that. Eve was created as a helper for Adam, but not as a servant or a slave or something like that, who… She’d stay at home. She had her own opinions. I’m from Hackney in East London. I live with my mum and my dad and my little sister and my brother. I’ve always been brought up as a Baptist Christian. I have friends who are Muslim and friends who are atheists and I have arguments about Christianity and religion and stuff. I enjoy it because you get to learn about the world in different ways but it also makes me question a lot about my faith. Recently, you know, I’ve got into politics and feminism. 100 years ago, you know, it would have been illegal for a woman to come out and protest, so to use those rights is very important. I know many Christians, I would say Hannah is one of them, you know, you read the text and you understand that what’s being said, you know, they are rules to live by, but at the same time, it’s not changing the Bible, it’s simply adapting some things that… Maybe just can’t work as easily in the modern day because it was written over 2,000 years ago. So I think that to take the Bible completely literally is wrong because of the time it was written in. We can’t change the Bible, any text of it. The Bible is never going to change. Excuse me, but I think the cake is done. It seems to me that Hannah especially, she thinks we’re just in a box and really we aren’t. I would love to help her, you know, show her that being at home, being a homemaker, having a family, that’s really part of our joy. I’m like a ninja potato peeler. You’re just going crazy with the peeler. Basically we’re just here to feed the men. Wait, that’s it? I can see it, I can see where they’re coming from. No, I mean I can see it too, but I just don’t, I honestly do not agree with it at all. Some respects I do, some respects I don’t. But they’re very respectable people, you know, they admire their homes and… It’s their lifestyle. Somewhere under the apple tree. My Amish man said to me, peel your potatoes, do all the work, because I’m going to bring home the bacon. The bacon! As the good book says, whatever you do, you must work at it with all your heart. Awesome. I think Amish goes hand in hand with carpentry. What do you think makes the difference between something that you would make or… So I was learning from Ikea. The way we look at it is everything we do, we should do in the honor and glory of God. I think having a clear-cut purpose, you’re motivated to do things the best you can. We think part of our work is part of our mission here. Is that the same as when you make dinner? Correct. So it’s almost everything you do should always be to the best of your ability. Correct. The Bible tells us… do all in the name of the Lord. So whether we’re working the land, harvesting produce, or setting the table for new friends, we always take a few moments to remember all we have to be thankful for. Hi, boys. Hi, guys. Hello. Hi. We feel blessed to have you here. It’s something new for us, and so we’ll treasure this for years to come. So we’ll pause for a word of prayer. Amen. We don’t have these things that’s for a bono. And there’s little packages that they bring. I remember well, a tornado went through back in 1985, I believe. One mile north is where I grew up. And it totally flattened the huge barn my aunt had their farm. And the day of their raising, it was a huge barn they put up. And there was probably, I’m guessing, 300 people there to help. And how long did they last for? If it is being built right, it should last for 1,000 years. Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. It is. I think I got a bit carried away a little bit. with my conversation but I think that there’s nothing wrong in debating that way you learn more and I came here to listen. I think their views on the Bible and Christianity are very different and also very similar to mine and so it’s quite it is quite interesting to discover the differences and talk about them. I don’t think we’ve got up later than 6am any time this week so I am tired yeah. But I am, quite oddly, almost getting into the routine of waking up stupidly early. So I am finding it easy and easy every day. Well boys, six o’clock. Time to get up. Time to get up girls. The barn raising is tomorrow, so the oak timbers are being brought over from the workshop. We’re just going to assemble everything on the ground so it’ll be ready to bring it up and erect. Okay. That’s what it is. We mark all the timbers either with a number or a letter, and they all have their certain place. But to set up the timbers, we’ll do it by hand. It’s a bit like when at home you get like a gazebo and you’ve got to put A1 into B4. You want to stand there? Are you interested? Uh, celery. And I think I’d like potatoes. The English girls are helping the women in the kitchen. There will be 80 mouths to feed, so there’s still a lot of work to be done. And God loves a cheerful giver. If I never see another dish again, it will be too soon. It’s just taken for granted that because I’m a woman, I’m perfectly happy to cook clean and wash up dishes. At times like these, it’s a blessing to see all the women pull together. Girls, I would like to introduce you to my first cousin, Leah Miller. Hello! Nice to meet you. I’m Charlotte. What was your name? I’m Hannah. Hannah? Hi Hannah. It looks like you’re busy doing dishes. Yes. That’s how you do it. I would say doing dishes were the least interesting part of my experience. I quite enjoy doing dishes. I used to hate it when I was younger, but I like it. Like, you’re doing something, you’re making a difference. I could never be a housewife because it is boring, quite frankly. I think we stereotype genders far too much. For me, women and men are quite cool, I suppose. It does kind of feel like you’re restricted to the home, women aren’t so equal to men. Well, I think definitely the woman, you know, the house is her domain where she’s kind of the queen. I find a lot of joy in serving and realising I can be of help with anyone around me. I don’t mind cooking, but it’s something that I’m… You don’t really enjoy and joy? I’ll do it maybe once in a while, then it’s fun, then I’ll do it every day. It becomes a chore, I suppose. I think that’s probably where a lot of people are. Love comes in, don’t you? Love, like love for your family. I mean, we were created to be submissive, and there’s a great blessing in that. You know, I’m quite headstrong. Me and my boyfriend, for instance, we, no one wears the trousers. I just don’t like the idea that you have to submit to the man. I just think guys are more capable, I guess. Really? I kind of think so. I mean, they think of life in a different way. I I can sense anger off of both the girls, really. It’s kind of this angry vibe that we’re kind of trapped in this paralysis of working as a woman, not being able to adventure out and kind of get stuck into the man role. Maybe I’m being a bit more submissive and taking on the woman gender role a bit more. You know, you’re admired for making dinner and cooking a good meal and making things clean. and, you know, women like to feel that they’re making things… things nice and I think it’s just quite respectful. I feel quite respected. Start your. Hannah, would you want to sign a pin? Yeah. It’s a Miller family tradition to sign the hickory pins that hold the timbers together. So the girls take a break from their valuable work in the kitchen. Sienna and Charlotte, you want to sign a pen? I’m going to put love heart, so love is from England. We’re an honest family, isn’t that lovely? It’s not really moving. It doesn’t normally take this long. I’m just going to bang my peg because it’s the only thing I’ve got. Going good. Great. I’d say if you go another inch, it would go easier. This is a hard one, one of the stubborn ones. For us, it’s simple. The man is the head of the household, and the woman’s role is to support him. We just follow what it says in the Bible. And there sure is wisdom to be found in God’s Word. I was thinking about our conversation this morning, and I thought it would be really interesting to read over the Scripture in Ephesians here, which you probably are familiar with if you read your Bible a lot. I don’t read it as often as I should, I guess. It says, wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. And then, you know, down below where it explains it, it says, It does not mean becoming a doormat, which I guess you kind of feel like we might be doormats or restricted or whatever. Mm. We feel kind of like it has to be a mutual submission to each other. Yeah, and I totally agree with you. Mm-hm. I don’t think that a woman should stay at home and have to do domestic work all the time by, you know… And I understand that. That’s the way you decide you want to live your life. I mean, you have that choice. There are certain points that I still don’t agree with with them, but I think we understand each other a bit more. You know, I get her point of view and she gets mine, and where maybe my liberal views on the Bible are not the same as hers, we’ve got a middle ground and the middle ground is, you know, we both believe in a God that loves us. You know, I’ve always been a Christian, I’ve always been brought up in a Christian home, and I think, I guess, I’ve been through all the doubts, I suppose. You know, like, I so want God to be there. In my heart of hearts, I know he’s there, but because I don’t… Feel him. ..feel him and I don’t see him… I don’t know, like, how do you guys deal with doubt, I suppose? Because, you know, you must doubt at points. You’re saying you find it hard to understand why God is, how we can see God is loving if, like, somebody gets killed or somebody dies? Or just, you know, whatever. I want God to be there, you know, really badly, but… Does it feel like God’s far away sometimes? Yeah, I understand that. It’s okay. I don’t want to cry. When the worst of that trial passes, you look back and you can tell that God was close. Yeah. God’s way of shaping and molding us to become stronger and having a greater faith in Him. You know, they do have the strength that no one else has. You know, they have something that is precious and, you know, something that perhaps in, you know, our society, we don’t value. When Simon Peter walked abreast, putting his faith unto the test, he said, Master… Every day for the Millers starts with singing and devotions. But today there’s something extra special to be thankful for. There’s going to be a barn raising. Whenever you’ve waded out too far in waters too deep, remember when waves are over your head. Here under his feet. Yeah, it’s like 6.15 a.m. And so there’s a number of people here already. We want to get the potatoes over, get them starting cooking, so we can mash them, like maybe 10 o’clock, and then just keep them warm. Then after we have everything done, we’re free to go outside and watch. So we’re aiming to work as quickly as possible? Yes. Thank you. No problemo. A group of men, 40 strong, will raise the barn by hand. Friends and neighbours working side by side. There’s a lot more people arriving. Oh, this is exciting now. This is just how our forefathers would have done it hundreds of years ago. I can feel the tension. Good tension though. Yeah. It’s adrenaline. I’m gonna build a barn. How do you say it in an English accent? Barn. Barn raising. Barn raising. I don’t want to miss out. I was chomping at the bits. Let’s go. Why don’t everybody just pause and silence for a minute. I don’t want to miss out. I was chomping at the bits. Let’s go. Why don’t everybody just pause and silence for a minute. Why don’t everybody just pause and silence for a minute. Alright, just don’t go real fast. Just go up slow. And listen for the time when I say grab your spike holes. Everybody confident? Ready? Just go slow. Here we go. All up, spike holes. Push! On up! Keep going! Keep going! Keep going! Wheeee! Wow! On up! Easy! Easy! On up! On up! Whoa! Great team! That is pure teamwork. I mean my book of the season river. Jazz group. It’s really nice to see all the men working together, it’s good. There are four frames to raise and all, and the men mustn’t rest until each is up and securely held in place. Are you ready? Go up slow. Here we go. On, up, on up. Slight falls, go on. On up! On up! On up! Okay. That is amazing. I can’t believe this. Okay girls, I think we’re going to go in and finish the dishes and get the noon meal started. Yeah, I think they deserve it. Now I’ve seen this. Excuse me, is the colander on the rack? Actually, we’re going to use it again. Thank you. No barn raisings come… complete without a noon feast. It’s the day that everybody’s going to be here and we’re going to, you know, this is now happening. I love it. There will be meatloaf with gravy, 20 different pies and lots of mashed potatoes. It’s going to take a while to look like that. Take some muscles. Oh, another one. Irene, Irene, you’re missing out. Each A-frame weighs four tons, so the men need all their muscle to heave them into place. It’s been amazing. You know, one of the best experiences of the trip. Every man’s kind of effort counts, I think. What do you enjoy about it? I know, I just quite like the hard work. Yeah? Really? Only when the cross beams are secured in place will the structure be strong and true. I think it’s going really, really well. It’s such a quick build. It’s meant to be back to basics and sort of slotting things in like Jenga bricks. The pockets we made yesterday, all three of them fit perfectly, so I think we’re all quite happy about that. But things don’t always go quite to plan. Take yours down. Yep, we’ll have to take it down. Four inches or less. We’ll give it a… another try. She’ll be fine. Once that’s done, these potatoes are ready too. Yeah! Yeah, awesome! To have women here is definitely a good feeling for myself. Not necessarily helping with the food, but just being here and just among everybody else, it just makes me feel more comfortable. And this community are like chipping in and you can see the barn raising and the sun is shining. It’s just really lovely. I feel part of the family at the moment, which is really nice. You know, I feel accepted, so it’s just really nice. In just six hours, the men have managed to put up all the timbers. So it’s time for a well-earned break. We’d like to take this opportunity and this time at the Noonar to express our gratitude to everyone for the help we’ve had this forenoon. We don’t feel worthy of all thank our friends from England. I thought maybe at this time we’ll pray. There’s not much that beats working with our brethren on a task that helps find the community together. But a bit of fine cooking goes a long way. To build this barn, you know, it just goes on from one generation to the next. All the women seem to love to cook and bake. When we just live for ourselves… We don’t have that connection. But when we live for each other, we have that connection. And it’s just such a satisfying feeling. It’s a day to celebrate all that we have. But the men’s work isn’t done yet. And the women’s work doesn’t finish until the last dish is washed. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. The barn stands as a solid reminder of what can be achieved if we all stand together. It just reminds us what we really have in the Amish community as far as being able to really depend on each other and come together and help each other out. After a week working with wood, we hope our teenage guests have learned something about our Amish way of life. It is really, really unique. I think in England there’d be a sense of cynicism, if it was even possible, which I really do doubt, just to get 40 people to your house to do something for free. The reason you would be doing it is because you… want something in return. The way it is here is they don’t do it for that. They want the sense of self-satisfaction that they’ve helped someone and I think that’s really, really amazing that that’s all they need. I think it really is amazing and really spectacular and quite inspiring. I got back myself and how I felt became a little bit less selfish I think. I was genuinely just really proud of the three boys, that they got the opportunity to do something like that and they got a chance to build something that will be here for a really long time. Wow. Yeah, I felt quite humbled by that. The barn raising has really, you know, heightened my emotions to the very max. Being surrounded by the Amish people and seeing how content and happy they are in their society me hope to believe in something. A kind of spark went off in my mind. That’s something that perhaps I’d like to do, to just have that, you know, comforting. It is comforting to have someone there, you know, God, to speak to. Kids I’ve met seem really happy and really content with their lives. And happiness is the most important thing, I would definitely say. But if I had my way, I think I’d show them what else is out there and then see what they’d choose. I would hope they would maybe choose their communities but I think it would just be really it was really important that they would know that there was another way. Whoa. So far, our intrepid teenagers have learned to live the simple life and helped raise a barn. This week, they’re on their way to Berlin, Ohio to go farming with some of the hardest working Amish people around. The boys will be staying with Lloyd Miller and his family. Hi. James. James. Lloyd. They run a dairy farm with 100 cows and work 15 hours a day, 6 days a week. You guys are loaded to stay here for a month instead of a week. Okay, well, listen, it is a little rain. Let’s go inside. We’ll just have a sit down, and we’ll get to know each other, okay? The Millers are what we call New Order Amish. Don’t be tricked into thinking they’re modern folk, though, as they’re much like the rest of us. They love God, live plain, and dress plain. Although you’ll find a little less facial hair around here. Just don’t be, you know, just relax, okay? We don’t bite, we don’t bark. We are a dairy farm. We milk cows for a living. We run it as a family operation. We don’t have any hired help, and we always get up on time, okay? You didn’t get enough sleep. I was asleep last night, I can see that. We do get to bed real early. We never sleep late. Milking happens twice a day. Everybody pitches in and helps. So James, what are those? Headbands. One of them from my iPod. A what? iPod, like. iPod? Yeah. You carry it with you all the time in London? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we play music on it. So we just leave that in the room then? It’s going to be quite unusual for me to have it away from me. Oh yeah? So I’m not trying to intimidate you. I want to be your friend, OK? We just, you know. We don’t want any of that. Living under Lloyd’s roof this week means living by his rules. Don’t think our English girls will have it easy this week. They’ll be working hard on a farm with slightly different animals. I think this one is a poultry farm, so I just wrote it with slime. They’re going to make us kill chickens, aren’t they? They’ll be the guests of Nathan Mast and his soon-to-be extended family. This is my wife Anna and this is Rhoda, my only daughter. I have five sons and Rachel here, which is my oldest son, Josiah’s girlfriend. They’re planning on getting married. So soon we’ll have two daughters. It’s a lovely farm. Yeah, we enjoy it. It’s back in. It’s a lot of privacy. As far as behavior, I would just say, we just ask that you dress modestly. And we’d much rather hear you sing or whistle than cuss. We hope you enjoy your stay here. Thank you very much. Are you guys familiar with milking cows? I’ve never done it. Never done it. Milking cows and mucking out barns takes up most of the day. So three fresh-faced, hard-working Englishmen are like… like manna from heaven for Lloyd. This is a milking unit, and you just put it on right between their hind legs. And right now we’re doing 70 cows, and time is important to me. We need to get the job done. We’ll get you to sweat a little bit. The Bible says the sweat of your brow, you’re gonna feed your family. I believe that. I think that’s good for everybody, and I think we should sweat and know what it is to sleep good at night because you’ve worked hard. And that’s a good feeling. So you guys didn’t necessarily grow up with any livestock? I sort of mainly grew up in the countryside, so I was near cows and stuff, but not to such an intimate level like this. So is this something you look forward to, or is it like, oh, I don’t even want to go there? We try to adapt to it, really. It’s just still quiet. It’s a shock to me, sort of being out here, doing stuff like this. My religion is to do whatever I want. I’ve never worked in my life. Because I don’t particularly enjoy it. I live on my own. My dad’s in the army, so from like six till I was about 15, I hadn’t really spoke to him. My mum’s more sort of, I don’t know, like, sort of the only way to speak if we need to speak. I quite like it, it gives me a lot of freedom. Do you live with your parents or where do you guys live? I live on my own. I’ve been living on my own since I was 16. You lived on your own since you were 16? Yeah. But we have these things called hostels. That’s more because I was in care up until 16. So from 16 you get moved on. OK. I didn’t actually want to go into one, but the social service decided it was best. So I had to sort of follow. OK. Well, I don’t know of any single case of that type of scenario among the Amish culture. I don’t mean that to sound we’ve got this thing together, because there’s other issues that crop up. I have a heart for James to the point that I would like to sit down with him and just try to be there, because I think he needs somebody. Check out the number, Gerald. Farming provides not just food, but work for our families, too. Lloyd’s eldest son, Jamin, works away from the dairy farm, leaving 14-year-old Gerald and his younger brother and sisters to help out. So he grabs an iron and she records it. This is my secretary. It’s a pretty important job. If she messes up, the whole thing is junk. We need to start over. Push it down and scoop some up. And then just like George is doing, you can just kind of spread it out. So you guys, do you have any chores or any responsibilities like this? We’ve got a dog. I try and take him on walks if needed. But I guess that’s quite small in comparison to sort of 19 cows. What about you, James? No. I don’t really have many chores. I have no set chores or parents or anything like that. I can imagine. Being an outsider and sort of never having to do any of this, I’d sort of judge it as quite bad. But obviously, their dad Lloyd seems… I think it’s a good idea. We’ll get up early, we’ll do the chores and spend some time together. I hope they can benefit, that’s the main thing. I don’t want this experience to be empty. I want it to really carry some weight. It makes an impact. Like most Amish farmers, the Mass family grow crops and rear chickens to help feed themselves and their community. But there’s one big difference in the way things are run around here. The ladies work on the farms too. I do laundry and breakfast, and then I come out to the chicken house. So you’re in charge of the chickens then? Yeah, that’s what I like to do. Really? I don’t know why, but I do. A righteous person cares for the needs of their animals. So even the chickens get homes around here. And this is where the girls will be working. It’s going to smell a little bit and it’s a little noisy, but they will absolutely not hurt you. I think we’re going to go ahead. Oh, my son! Oh, my son! Oh, that really does smell, doesn’t it? Is it too strong for you? A bit strong. Well, how many is there again? There’s 12,500 in each house. Ooh, and how many houses do you have? Two. Why can’t you keep them outside in a field or something? Is that, is it just because you can’t feed them? Yeah, and you know, somehow I’d have to get them in during the night because of the rotens and things that would get after them and kill them. Yeah. Excuse me, can I get some air, please? Yeah, yeah, you can go. It’s everything a newt would be. It’s disgusting, it’s horrible, pretty inhumane really. Oh, my back! It was overwhelming for him. But I don’t really know why. I think that the birds, you know, they’re comfortable out there. That’s why I’m vegetarian. Fight, fight, fight, man! I am bold, loud… We say fight back! And I sort of, whenever and wherever possible, followed my own path. I originate from Sierra Leone. I’m from a humble background. I’m a student at Cambridge. And I’ve got a lot of opinions and I think it’s really important, especially for young people like me, to do something that will make a change for somebody. Students and workers, unite and fight! I’ve always had a revolutionary spirit. I think it is really important for people to believe in something, enough to fight for it. Unfortunately, that’s how we get chickens. It’s a bit weird, isn’t it, seeing it for real? You wouldn’t imagine… You don’t think about it. I’m going to have to dig deep into my soul. Do you think they’re planning to escape? No, I’m being serious. I can see this is going to probably traumatise me. Okay. Your top and bottom is the same, right? Yeah. Okay. When they’re not working, Amish ladies love nothing more than to weave a quilt. It’s a chance for them to be together and share in the word of the Lord. This morning, Lloyd’s wife Edna has invited Hannah, Charlotte, and Sienna to join them. Hello. Wow. This is called a comforter, right? Yeah. OK. And the comforter goes for a charity purpose, like send it overseas to a poor country, like Haiti or Romania, people that can’t afford to buy their own. Would you do something like this for charity at home in your country? The only charity stuff I do is if I’m sorting my clothes out, you know, I’ll bung my clothes in a charity bag and take it to the charity shop. Yeah. Without holy deeds to help us focus on a godly life, anyone can stray from God’s path. I’m kind of bored of the way I live at the moment. It’s kind of very samey and repetitive. Maybe there is something missing, you know, going out all the time and partying and being out with friends. You know, it takes up my time and I want time to spend. that I can really hold on to. I have a sort of emptiness inside me which I can’t describe. HE GRUNTS I don’t know what I believe in and what I don’t with religion, really. I don’t have any strong connections with it. I don’t go to church or anything. I feel like something is nagging inside me that I need to find out, but I’m not sure quite what it is. I’ve kind of made a little decision that perhaps I would like to believe in, you know, Christianity, believe in God, because obviously it’s a very strong foundation for you and you’re very passionate about it and that’s really interesting. That makes my hair stand on end when you say that. It makes you excited. Yeah, I just love to hear that. To us that makes it worthwhile having you come here. That’s our ultimate goal. Oh, that’s lovely. I don’t really know how to start believing. I think it starts with an interest. It takes time to make a relationship. Personally, I will talk to God like I’m talking to my friend. I don’t pray, I say, you know, hello God. You know, today’s been awful. And I say, you know, I just talked to him. You can feel it in here. Well, I mean, I agree with what you said about if you believe, then you’ll feel something, right? And I don’t feel anything. So what do you think will happen when you die? I’ll go back to the Earth like I started. So you think you’re gonna… I just know that my body will decompose. Like you said, the body goes back to Earth, from what it was created. Yeah. Your soul goes to wherever you chose. You can send it to heaven, you can send it to hell. According to the Bible, I mean, there’s just no hope for the lost. Mm-hm. I mean, I hate to say it. According to my Bible, it’s eternal damnation. I still want to be your friend. I mean, I still love you. I still like you. But it’s been good discussing this. Yeah. I’m surprised people don’t believe. Especially growing up the way we did with nature out in the country. I mean, for us to say there’s no God, we might as well say there’s no gravity. I mean… Charlotte’s searching and she’s so hungry for this and Sienna’s trying to push it off. It’s kind of a mystery to me. I liked how much passion they have for their religion and God and Christianity. I want to know sort of where this longing for faith kind of came from really because it’s all just come from almost out of nowhere. I was wondering where it came from, really. Yeah. I think it’s kind of started with the whole belief thing, not believing in myself. It’s kind of… It’s an empty feeling, you know? I don’t have any belief, so perhaps that would fill my emptiness and my doubt. Well, I’m willing. If they… that passionate about it you know I’d like to be that passionate about it and go on a journey it would be incredible if you were to become a Christian for me I think that you need to really look within yourself and see well do I want to believe in a God that you know that died for me do you think that that is I mean that’s an incredible thing to do but do you think that that’s even possible you The fact that Charlotte wants to believe in Christianity is really wonderful, but I also think that perhaps she doesn’t know enough about You know why she wants to believe Christianity I think she needs to be in it for more than just the fact that she wants to feel a bit more confident in herself The key word was challenge. I was challenged quite a lot today. And I challenged people quite a lot today. Days start early for us Amish. But days for the Amish dairy farmer, well, they start even earlier. Boys, hey, let’s go milk, okay? Okay. When I wake my family up, they hit the ground running. We’ll be out in the barn, you know, in five minutes. Hey Jordan, hi. Are you guys coming? Yeah. George, are you coming? Hey, morning. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Dairy farming is exhausting, even if being part of the new order means you get to use electricity. You know when we milk together we have a chance to communicate. It’s a good time to kind of reflect and it’s a very comfortable place to be. Have you seen the size of these udders? I think it’s going well. How are you doing James? I’m doing alright, I ain’t started yet so… Oh yeah, oh yeah. A cow just sort of pooed on me and Jordan really, so… But not too happy about it. I think the whole kind of process… It’s a bit foreign to me, so finding a little bit strange at the moment. Bring it over and put it on this one. Push the button in. There you go. Look at that. Squeeze it a little bit, and it puts out more of the stuff. You might end up getting a little dirty. hands that’s all right. Dirty jobs are the fun jobs mate, remember that. It’s good for your skin. It’s good for your skin, yep. Another about two milkings, we’re gonna take a vacation, you guys are gonna take care of it okay? We’re gonna get paid. Paid? Yeah. Who’s gonna feed you? I don’t know. Yeah of course, everybody wants to be paid. How do you know? You gotta get paid. We Amish believe that we hold dominion over all God’s creatures. Increasing the water supply. I hope I’m doing it right though. It seems that Charlotte’s the only English girl who agrees. She’s doing wonderful. She would make a good farm girl. I think they enjoy their life as well as they can because a chicken does not have the mentality to enjoy life like we do. All they know is eat and drink even if they would be on the outside, that’s all they would do. Definitely. Anna explained really well how they’re brought up and how well they’re looked after. They do have a very good life and you can see that. They have loads of space, loads of food. …and fresh water. So all in all, it’s been a really good morning. It’s not just animals that we Amish care for. We like to keep our guests happy too. And there are few things worse than an upset visitor. So what did you think about the chicken operation? Massively uncomfortable, to be honest. We try to be very careful that they always have water and food, so they’re comfortable, yeah, but they do have a short life. It raised a lot of questions for me, really, to be honest, and kind of confirmed a few of my beliefs. To me they seem like a commodity, so I was just wondering sort of how you look at them. I don’t know if anybody has a chicken for a pet. You know your chest, like a cat will come up to you, but a chicken runs away from you. They won’t be your friend. I know I just don’t feel like they should be commodities quite frankly. We will probably not agree on the chickens, but we don’t have to be disagreeable about it, you know. I decided that I would try to be extra kind to her and, you know, to not let it bother me because she is my guest. Respect and togetherness come high up on our list of Amish priorities. It’s the same when it comes to dating. Grab a seat somewhere and make yourself at home. Oh, make myself at home. Once two people start going out, they’re expected to get engaged, like Josiah and Rachel, who will marry in two months. How many days is it now, Josiah? 58, if I remember right. 58 days. So every night, are you, like, waiting for the next day to come? Exactly. Do Amish teenagers or young people often have relationships before they meet that person? No, we don’t date just for the fun of it. We take it more seriously. Do you think there’s anything wrong with sort of dating for the fun of it and not necessarily thinking you will marry that person? I mean, for me, that’s not… If I choose to go out with someone, it’s not because I think I’m going to marry him. It’s more just, I like that person, we’ll see how it goes. What percent of, like, the people in Britain divorce or what percent of the couples separate? I don’t know the statistics, but I think it’s very high. Marriage doesn’t mean as much in England, I think, that… You know, you can say to someone, you know, I want to spend the rest of my life with you doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get married. We believe that once we get married, it’s going to be written down in heaven that we’ve become one and God’s going to hear our vows so that it can be a lifelong life filled with blessings. How old are you both? I’m 22 and she’s 20. Oh, that’s insane! I’m 19, I’m always 20, and marriage is not even top of my list at all. It’s not even an option right now. Just as our families work as a group, we also eat as a group. It’s another way that we like to stick together. Fruit for dessert, is that all right? I hate fruit. So you don’t eat any fruits or vegetables? Why? Why? She never liked them. When I was 14, until I was 16 and a half, I was living in care. My mum was arrested for arson. The charges were dropped within six weeks by them. Me and my brothers didn’t have nowhere to go. And it sort of… Day after my last few six years, my social worker called me and he said, how would I like to live in a hostel? I was just like, I don’t. And, but social services still move me on. It’s quite lonely, but like it gives me a lot of freedom to do what I want to do. Tell me about the rivet. I like to be different. And I think having something there stands out a bit. Personal choice, right? Yeah, definitely is a choice. A lot of young people, they want to stand out, kind of be noticed, and, you know, because… Missing link is really what it is. You’ve lived by yourself since you were 16, right? Uh-huh. I was coming from sort of foster care. But that’s a product that comes from families that aren’t committed to each other. You seem to assume a lot about my family, really. Well, if families… stand together then we don’t have foster care, right? You’re talking about how my family’s broken when you don’t know nothing about my family. No, I didn’t. I don’t think you should be in any way, shape or form judging my family. I thought you crossed the line there, but you don’t know nothing about me. Oh, I’m sorry, James. I didn’t know anything about your family. And you’re talking about how my family’s broken when you don’t know nothing about my family. And I’m not too happy about that. He cut me off very short. I definitely didn’t mean it to be belittling or to be over-inquisitive. I would like to spend a little time and sometime be able to just share with him more of… Just make sure we understand each other. I just sort of ticked off with it. He needed to know, and that’s how I decided to tell him. I slightly regret doing it at the dinner table. I think I maybe should have pulled him aside a bit, but I don’t regret anything that I did say, and I’d say everything that I had to say again. We Amish are a peace-loving people. Even if we sometimes disagree, we always remember the Bible quote that says, the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to everyone. Seems our friends… And Crenciana may be coming around to this idea too. The first time we came in here, it was a shock. It was a shock to my system, really. I think it’s important that I see what you do, because you kind of gave me your side of it, and you kind of said, you know, in light of everything, you do your best. So I kind of just want to see you at work, really. On the one hand I kind of have my struggle, but on the other hand I’m really happy that there’s an Amish woman who has her own business. But frankly a family of eight takes a lot of money and a lot of food and a lot of clothing and just everything if we wouldn’t have the house. my husband would have to work out of the home. We have these chicken houses, and that way I can help supplement the family’s income. How come you were so keen to make sure that that was your thing and you wanted to do everything yourself? I have always enjoyed the challenge. Now, when I go to the chicken house, I make my own decision as to what I want to do. At some points in this journey, I found that some Amish women seem to almost depend solely on their husbands. Through your business, you show that you’re just as capable as your husband. I think it’s quite easy to be on the moral high ground, isn’t it, until you try and see it from someone else’s perspective. So I think that’s one thing, yeah. Sometimes you can be just so full of… of your own views that it’s really hard to see it from someone else’s side, especially when it’s so radically different from anything you would have ever thought of. You may have noticed that we quite like the Bible. Its teachings keep us on God’s path. Sharing in those teachings is a privilege that we seldom offer to another. an outsider. I brought you all a Bible and it says GPS. Now we, you know, we all use a GPS to find what? Your way around. So this is the GPS. Thank you. Shows you the way to get to heaven and hope you enjoy Bible study. This is something that happens in our community for the young folk. These Bible study evenings allow young Amish men and women to get closer to each other and to God. Welcome to our Bible study tonight. Hold our giants of fear and unbelief. God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see. And we hear the term world peace all the time. You know, what would it take? I think the answer is right here, where it says we are to live humbly and not to think that, hey, I’m better than you, but realize that we are all human beings, we’re all on the same level. That reminded me of a former president, John Kennedy, who once made this famous remark, ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for the country. And this evening, I’d just like to take it one step further. Ask not what others can do for you, but look what you can do for others. It’s quite interesting to see that their idea of a fun night out is to sort of sit on a porch and read the Bible and sing together. I think it was nice though. I think it’s nice that they can sort of all come together. I guess it’s a lot cheaper than sort of a night out in London. I just want to appreciate our thanks for being part of this evening. I think it’s been tremendous. So wishing every one of you God’s blessing. Okay, thank you for coming everyone. How did you like the Bible study tonight? Oh, I loved it. I loved, you know, everyone getting together. And then I kind of just sat back and listened and what was said was really interesting and really inspiring as well. It was really nice to see you guys get together and just the Amish way of life really. So yeah, it was lovely. Thank you very much. Good. Most days in our Amish communities are taken up by hard work. But every now and again, we, like Josiah and his brother James, take the chance to relax and unwind by enjoying nature. What’s a nice day? Good day for swimming. Looks like it. You got frogs in here, pad pools you got. You’ve got wildlife in here, so why don’t we change and go swim? Yep. The water’s all right. It’s a bit chilly, but it’s warmer than it would be if we were jumping into a pond at home. I also don’t know of any ponds at home I’d actually jump into, unless I want any sort of rabies or faeces in my eyes. It’s a bit like the Lilo in Amsterdam, just a lot colder. The Lilo is still quite… it’s still a swimming pool. This is really sort of at one with nature. There’s more girls at Lilo. Lovely girls at Lilo. Do you think this would be better if this had more girls? It’s pretty obvious, I guess, that girls and boys don’t mix too much around here. We try to keep ourselves as far from temptation as we can. I’ve heard you’re getting married. Yes, you heard right. How long have you been together? Uh, about ten months. Ten months. And I can honestly say I’ve never touched her on purpose. Do you literally mean actually physically touch, as in… Physically touch. As in almost, or fingertips touching? I’ve never intentionally touched her. I can… I think I can honestly say I see… I can see my girlfriend more clearly in a hands-off relationship than if you would not have a hands-off relationship. Rather strange? Yeah, that was, um, I had an idea that you had a no hands-on relationship in my mind. I assumed you meant sort of sexually. So I mean like a hug, even a handshake is too far. A handshake is too far. Any touch will arouse a guy. It will lead you to somewhere you don’t want to be. And yes, it’s hard. But on the other hand, I can see the benefits. If you can love a girl without touching her, without having a sexual relationship with her before you get married, why couldn’t you have an even better relationship with her after you’re married? I understand it from Joe’s point of view, even the smallest of touch creates temptation and temptation leads to sin. For me, I don’t get aroused from shaking a girl’s hand, but I can understand the logic behind it. He seems quite happy with it and he, I guess, is looking forward to sort of his wedding day where he gets to shake hands with her for the first time. James and Lloyd haven’t yet settled their disagreement, so they’ve decided to meet up, away from the rest of the family. I was quite annoyed and very frustrated in the way that you felt that my family was broken. Because my family isn’t broken. We’re just independent from each other. In the Amish society, we would promote that the children… live with their parents and have a union and work with them. It was just quite annoying that you sort of assumed stuff, really. But, um… It’s just quite commonplace in England and everywhere else that these things will happen. You know, our home here has not been the perfect home either. My oldest son. But there was a time when I could not connect with him. I could not relate with him. I could not even talk with him. He spent a lot of time partying and doing drugs. He came in the wrong crowd and they went a little too far and they broke into a couple local businesses and he was involved and the law got behind him. His jail sentence was for 180 days. I made lots of mistakes. I was definitely shocked to find out that his son had been to prison. In the Amish world, that is unheard of. It was nice to be able to have that sort of bond with him, especially after he’d made all these assumptions that, you know, after my mum had been into prison, we were more or less in the same boat. I mean, I didn’t want to hurt you. I want to be a friend. I think we may have got off on the wrong foot, I guess, sort of when I jumped out of the van, you know. A bright pink hoodie and these loud headphones on. Whoo! Maybe we are certainly too quick to jump to conclusions, and I can see that’s what happens, so I apologise for that. That’s what it took to connect us, was that mutual family, and I think that’s really neat. There are few greater signs of friendship than for one person to break bread with another, and have a little hymn singing too, of course. A good evening is good food, but that’s only the minor part, and then there’s always good. fellowship. If you don’t know the song, just let the words sink in. Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the world thy hand. have made, then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee, I’ll praise. Fellowship between Amish boys and girls hits a high point at weekly youth groups. This is where most loving relationships blossom. In fact, it’s where Josiah and Rachel got together. How did you get together with your boyfriend? So we asked for my friendship. Then we had a date a lot about a month, month later. My parents often tell me I’m going too fast with my boyfriend. How long were you dating already? We’ve been dating now for about four months. I mean, I know I’ve talked to a few of the older women. Like, some of them do kiss on dates. Oh, no. You don’t kiss on dates? We have a hands-off courtship. Completely. Completely hate yourself. Why do you do that? If we ever marry or anything like that, it would be more special. No regrets. Yeah. Yeah. No regrets. For me, personally, I have had sex with my boyfriend. But I can see exactly where you’re coming from. I mean, there was a time where I wanted to save myself. Right. If we would do it and the relationship wouldn’t work out, we have no regrets. if you would start it and then we’d just go further. further. And then once you get married it wouldn’t be special anymore. I think it’ll take a little bit to fully grasp it what we were kind of saying and trying to teach her. Because we don’t want to make her feel guilty or something like that it’s just what we believe and we just have different convictions. We might just be a little bit more radical than she is. There was a point in my life where I thought, oh, yeah, I’d like to save my virginity for marriage. But, you know, obviously it didn’t happen. They want it to be special, they want it to be something that they will treasure forever because no one else has been able to kiss them, no one else has been able to touch them in that way or whatever. So for them it’s going to be something quite beautiful and something that means a whole world to them. An Amish person without a Bible is like a buggy without a horse, clueless where to go or how to get there. Luckily for Charlotte, Anna and Rachel have a book that might help her on her Christian journey. So how often do you study the Bible? Every morning and every night. Wow, dedication. I like to… It does take dedication. If God wasn’t there to talk to you and let your worries and doubts, would you have less confidence in yourself, what do you think? Oh, yes. When you reach a decision, and it’s God’s will, he gives you a kind of peace. Yeah, that’s what I’d really… Like perhaps turning into a Christian, it would give me more belief in myself. Do you think it would? I think it would, yes. Yes, I think so. I’d really like to see if there is, you know, if there is a God. And I believe there is because obviously you believe so strongly in it. So why wouldn’t there be? There is a God. I will start my journey and see where it takes me. That’s wonderful. We will pray for you. Yes, we will, definitely. It’s an exciting journey. You can have this Bible. Really? Yes, you can. Are you sure? Would you like it? Yeah, I’d love it. OK. Oh, I’m excited now. Read it every day. Read it every day. I’m very excited for you. Very excited for you. Aw, thank you. I want a dog. I think Charlotte is a brilliant person. At the moment she said she has no direction and she feels that her life is very much about herself. She seems to be very set on the idea that she wants to find faith and I think if it’s something that’s going to make her happy and make her feel fulfilled then it’s a good thing so I’m not concerned about her turning into a crazy fundamental person yeah I hope that her journey is a good one and I hope that she finds whatever she’s looking for really I’m really excited actually to start reading it. Just the fact that someone’s going to be there that I can talk to and let my worries and doubts out instead of tiring me out. I’m going to be able to let it out and be kind of free because I don’t feel like I follow through with much. So following through with this, you know, it’s a big thing. It’s a total change, but I’m ready for it. Reading the Bible and working hard keeps us plenty busy, but every now and again, New Order types like to come together to sing Christian songs and let off a little steam. We’ll turn to Thee The soul of man never dies Playing music to our family is a relaxing time. It’s a time of unwinding. We let the children express themselves. We wouldn’t accept anything with a punky… where you would actually… everybody’s swaying and we want it to be a real old-fashioned more type I know it’s way out of style but it’s definitely what we enjoy just characters get revealed when we’re playing music if you didn’t think I was crazy when I got here you’re gonna think that when I leave Holy, holy We could really make up a song and we’ll put some lyrics to it. I’ve done this before, have you? No, I’ll play over it. We could make up a song about someone. How old are you? 14. What’s that? Gerald, he’s only 14 but Gerald has more responsibility than me and I. I am 18 years old. He wakes up in the morning… in a 5.30 Doesn’t even bother drinking a cup of tea Doesn’t need it Unlike me All of us from England would like to say thank you You welcomed us into your home and it’s been great I’m just mumbling, there’s nothing to say But thank you very much, I’m gonna leave today Thank you The end The children haven’t heard anything like that before. Oh, we’ll talk about it, I’m sure. Yes. This is going to be a conversation piece. Oh, yes. Yeah, I’m sure. I don’t think it was Jesus, but someone clever once said that the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Santa is back. Yeah! The road might be long, and we may get lost from time to time, but with a little help from God and each other, we’ll all get to the promised land. I’ve surprised myself. I successfully managed to really see things from someone else who has a very, very different opinion to mine. I managed to see where they were coming from, that more than one person can be right. So I definitely take back, I’ll take that back with me. Thank you very, very much for everything. Lloyd thank you for a very interesting experience I think. Thank you. I personally was unexpected. to make, like, a connection with Lloyd. Our religious views and our lifestyle are miles apart. In a weird way, it was nice to be able to make sort of a communication like that. We shall never forget you boys. All right. Yep. See you again. Bye, bye. See you later. This week our six British teenage friends are heading to a town called Ashland in Ohio to stay with the Burkholder family. Aww, they look smiley. I like smiley people. The Burkholders are plain people. like ourselves who live by the name of the Lord. And just like us Amish, they love big families. The Burkholder family has 10 members. I’m Rachel. I’m Harvey. Hi, Harvey. I’m Sienna. Hi. Hi, I’m Charlotte. Charlotte. What’s your name? James. James, OK. I’m Darlene. It’s so nice to meet you. Hello. We were looking forward to this day. Yeah, and welcome to the Burkholder family. It’s nice to have you. And we have rooms for you here. And work. And work. And as you noticed, I do go barefoot. and I… It’s not comfortable in shoes. We speak Pennsylvania Dutch, and… Normally we try to speak English when we have visitors. So if you hear speak an off language, it’s Pennsylvania Dutch. And we’re not talking about you. The Burkholders are what we call Old Order Mennonites. Back in the 1600s, we were all the same group. Then in 1693, we split because the Mennonites wanted to modernize. But as you can see, the Old Order Mennonites haven’t modernized that much, and they look pretty similar to us. However, look closely, and you can spot some tiny differences. In the Amish houses we went before, they didn’t have much on the walls and stuff, so it’s quite decorative. The house is pretty big as well. There’s lots of space. Yeah. It’s a big house, yeah. So this is the room where the boys would be staying in. Ooh, nice. This is the room where you get to stay and lounge, whatever you need to do to get rested. What do you… What do you think of what we’re wearing now? You’re dressed what I mean, I don’t know what to say. When he stepped out of the van I said, that looks like an Amish. No, see in our church, the guys wouldn’t be allowed to have long hair. They aren’t allowed to have any beards or anything. Should me and Jordan shave? Oh yeah, you wouldn’t dare come to church like this. Would you always wear your hair like this with a band? No, normally it’s a lot longer. I’ve got a car. I know. I’m gonna thank that Amish for doing that. Oh, I love it. Okay, this is gonna be your room now. These are your outfits, and you can see the names. Oh, they are? Oh! You should get that one. Oh! They’re so different. I kind of… I don’t know what to say. This is exciting. I actually love the pattern. So many patterns. Compared to the Amish dresses we wore, which were just really dark and really boring. Mennonites always We always wore the patterns and the Amish stayed original. They stayed with the solid colours. So that’s a really nice colour. It does, it goes nice. Whoever picked the colours is a good choice, I think. I actually really like it. Look at this. Looks like I’ve made a big effort. We usually aren’t allowed to wear make-up, so might be a good idea to take it off, huh? Is it something you, like, would wear all the time, pretty much? Yeah. It makes me feel prettier. I like to feel pretty. Sure. The earrings, is that something you wear all the time? Yeah, it’s just something I really like. Weirdly, I enjoy getting my ears pierced. Do you ever have ear piercings? No. It wouldn’t be allowed with the church. Must admit, Darlene, quite nice. Oh. It’s good looking to be honest. I’ll put it out there. Obviously we’ll see what the mood is like. I see no reason why you shouldn’t ask her on her date. Take her out in the buggy? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean don’t, I wouldn’t trust you. I think you should. I’m obviously not going to propose to her. No, they don’t want to get to… What are you asking about? I was asking about dates. Pretty awkward. Hello! You three girls can sit here and be Blake. Perfect. Your colours all fit your complexion. Trying on the new outfits for the first time was quite exciting, just cos we haven’t seen colour in a long time. But there is a limit to colour. I mean, this is nice, but, um… I feel a little explosive. Mmm, you can see they come out of a city. That was my first thing. I noticed the one had real long hair. I noticed the ring. If I was home on a Sunday morning and somebody would come to my door wearing a ring, long hair, I’d probably lock the door. But we thought, we’re going to overlook this. We can’t see their heart. We don’t know what’s in their heart. George is the one, just by looking at him, I’d say he’s good at sound. I wouldn’t think that he would be any harm. The other one is kind of iffy. Mmm, all dressed up and you’re shaved and you look like farmers. This is totally new for them, to be this close to someone with sort of lip piercings and stuff like that. And I think, you know, first impressions is everything, but I wouldn’t change. The Old Order Mennonites make all their own clothes, and Marnita and Darlene thought it would be fun to take the English girls to their fabric store. This means our city lasses need to get to grips with our plainer mode of transportation. Alright, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle. Okay, go, go, go, go. Keep on paddling. Keep straight, keep straight, keep on. Make a circle of the yard. Nick, keep on. Bikes are a contentious mode of transport for us Amish. Many of our groups don’t allow them, but the Old Order Mennonites love a good cycle ride. Sienna’s going for it. Come on, Sienna. We plain people dress plain. We don’t like anything to distract us from what is pure and modest. However, the Old Order Mennonites are allowed to wear floral prints. A little wilder than the norm, but there the wildness stops. Their dresses all conform to the same dress pattern. This one or this one? If it was for me, I’d go for this. It’s a matter of preference, really. It depends on what color you want to bring out, because this here would bring out more the blue version of it. That’s the color. I’d say that looks good. What are your favourite colours and patterns? Wild stuff. I really don’t know. Bright, colourful stuff. Does your mum let you get whatever fabric you like really? Not at all. Because I like stuff with big flowers, but we aren’t allowed to have those. We’ll try to stay with more lengths of me. medium to small prints, so you don’t, like in a crowd, everybody’s like, oh, who’s that girl? She’s got a really well dress on, you know? What’s she trying to be? That’s pretty interesting actually, because I’d wear something completely different for my friends to stand out. Shopping is a big thing in my life. I could go shopping every day. Look at this. I like this. I like that. Thank you. Probably all my money goes on clothes, to be honest. Hold on. A lot of it goes on make-up. And make-up. She feels she needs to be wearing lots of make-up all the time. When I was younger, I was a bit of a chunky monkey, really. I was a bit of a big kid. And I think with people judging me, the make-up kind of acted as a disguise. It’s kind of a mask that I have to put on to have this confidence. I do take quite a while getting ready for a night out. Obviously when you grow up you want to look older and you take more time in your appearance because you want to impress the guys. Probably my friends, I suppose. I’m influenced by what they like doing. They like going out partying and stuff and I’ll go along with that as well. Intentionally, you do kind of want to attract male attention because you just feel better in yourself. If you can kind of pull all the night out, it’s just kind of one up on you because you’ve managed to get a guy. And I don’t like that, cos I’m quite… ..quite scared, I suppose, of talking to boys, in a way. I’m quite nervy, cos I never know what to say and I never know what they make of me. My dresses would probably come up to about here. And I’d have high heels and I’d kind of, you know, get my legs out. And it makes me feel kind of good. I don’t know. I think I’d like that. It probably depends, too, on the places you go, you know, if you want to fit in. Like for us, personality is what stands out. We wouldn’t exactly try to draw attention with the clothes, maybe put it that way. As well as running a fabric store, the Burke holders have their own melon farm. Old order Mennonites don’t own cars. but they do own tractors. They see them as friendly technology, which helps their communities to harvest food from the rich Ohio soil. I want to use, I need to drive tractor. One of us will drive the tractor, well neither of us know how. If you can drive a car, you’ll know how to drive a tractor. David is 24, and he’s been working the soil since he was five. The first year I ran Tillage Equipment and Tractors, I was 12, which is pretty young, but I guess Dad trusted me, I don’t know. I loved it. It’s a very good life. You’re your own boss. It’s kind of a family thing. Me and my brother and Dad worked together. We love it. We love it. The Old Order Mennonites cherished the family thing, but I get the kind of feeling that life isn’t quite the same for George back home. For me it’s just it is quite different because I’ve been to boarding school since I was 10. So for about eight months of the year I’ve been at Eton, you know 250 miles away from my parents. It was always my parents decision for them it was kind of Eton or nothing. I feel that it’s giving him a real sense of his own individuality. I think when they’re away at school he can think who George is rather than George just being number two out of four boys. Excuse me the dog’s just disappearing. Um, Coco, here! Coco, come on! Coco, here! You know, being away from your parents can be quite difficult. It means I don’t have as much of a chance to build up, like, a close relationship. Listen, I would like you to come and stay at home a little bit during the holiday. Do you think you can give me a couple of days either side? Yeah. Yeah, no, I will. I will be… I’ll be back, like, late July. But I want to, like, see people and stuff like that. My mum gets quite frustrated, definitely, with, uh… My lack of presence, I guess. It’s interesting to see, you know, they share with the Amish that same sort of family value system of, you know, the family being the most important thing. And I think the farm is kind of like a glue that holds the family together. These guys seem very happy and very content, so I think it seems to be a good thing. All the hard work we put into the fields ends up here, on the dinner table. Meal times are a chance for us to get together, be with our families, and discuss the important things in life. How do you evaluate, or how do you look at happiness, or what is happiness to you? Oh, it’s such a big question, Avi. Why? I’ll help you out a little bit. I think you’re always happy. I think maybe to live, live, laugh and love, maybe. Like being able to sort of live freely. George? I don’t know, I’m really struggling with it. We get a lot of happiness from our simple, holy way of life. In fact, there’s nothing more joyful than Mama Rachel’s harmonica shindig. The harmonica is one of the few instruments us plain people are allowed to play. It’s a good way to exercise our country lungs. Perhaps not so easy for the city folk. Having fun with the family really lifts the spirits. But of course what gives us true happiness is being at one with God and reading the Lord’s Word. A week ago Charlotte vowed to read his most sacred and beautiful work from beginning to end. Yeah it’s kind of quite long-winded and there is a lot of pages to read. And I still don’t really understand, you know, all these names and stuff. It’s a lot of rules. It’s a lot of things to read up on. So I’m actually still on Genesis. Probably should have got a bit further by now. But I can’t. See, Genesis 1, couldn’t really get my head around that, so I’m worried that as I go further into it, you know, what’s going to happen then? I might get totally confused by the whole thing. But no, I’m not going to give up, actually. I’m going to try and see where it takes me. I have been praying to God, though. and getting my thoughts out of my head. And I think kind of my prayers are kind of being answered in a way because I’m, you know, saying to God that I want to say how I feel and kind of get on with the Amish, and I feel like I’m doing that. So maybe he is answering my prayers quite subtly. My heart is saddened. The Burkholder family come from an order of plain people, known as the horse and buggy Mennonites. And you can probably tell why. We worry that cars bring us close to temptation. And so we prefer to go the simple, slow way. This makes me feel like I’m out of period drama now. Love thy neighbor, the Bible tells us, and we couldn’t agree more. We like to come. come together in good times and bad, and let each other know how much we care. Hello. Today, the girls are taking time off from their chores to join a scrapbook party. Making cards for a special occasion. We had talked about making some for a boy that fell down from a construction job and broke both his wrists. That’s cool. Nice to know you’re being thought of. Yes. You just pick a card that you would like to make and we’ll help you. This is what we call a scrapbook shower, and it’s one of the ways our ladies like to party. You know when I come home and my husband asks, what were you doing today? I might have a card or two to show him. Then he knows I wasn’t just talking. I’m going to make this for my dad. The first man a girl falls in love with is her daddy. Yeah, he does a lot for me, so I think. For some people, like Margaret, a scrapbook can really make a difference to their lives. What is the scrapbook kind of about? It has verses of inspiration, sometimes longer poems, sometimes just short verses. My husband, he had cancer, and so we really appreciated all the scrapbooks that we got. And I think there’s over 500. If I was feeling blue about everything, I just had to look at those. And it kept me floating through hard times. He eventually improved, you know, and now we have those scrapbooks as a memory of that time, I guess. It’s really touched me actually. I didn’t think a card would touch me as much. They’re all very personal and obviously they spend a lot of time on that, so it really shows that they care. To Daddy Cool, I hope you’ve had time to refuel your batteries. I really have realised the amount of time and effort you put into allowing me to live my life just the way I like it. All the love in the world. They’re cute. He’ll definitely feel love when he gets there. Right, so this is the outside, very adult. And then we go in and it’s like BAM! It’s funny they call this a party. If I’m not dancing, then it’s not a party, quite simply. But it’s funny because I often have quite a firm idea of what I find fun and it kind of emphasises the fact that party means just getting together, really. That’s the main idea. And there was no alcohol, there was no smoking, there was no sort of shenanigans with the opposite sex. It was literally just a group of female friends getting together, doing something quite innocent and a good way to spend a good time. a good few hours really. Us plain people love to live simple, pray simple, and work simple. It would seem George has been taking this all in, and the plain living lifestyle has got him thinking and wanting to know more. I always enjoyed. I just love it. We were born that way and we live here. It’s all we ever know. I always loved raising plants and crops. I guess it was my blood and I just love it. So what about the fast pace of life? I don’t know. Well, if I have a job, I’ll do it. working in the office all day and kids be home fighting and I mean seeing they won’t get along with each other and Well, it’s 50 40 years down the road Where are they gonna be but where am I gonna be? I mean, it’s just home was always back on the farm I I wouldn’t want it any other way. How many bad days do you have a year? I don’t know. I would have guessed probably ten but I have no idea I mean, I don’t know just look at the bright things in life and I Don’t know the rest of the day goes better I don’t know. What bad days do you have in a year? You know, it’s hard to kind of qualify what a bad day actually is, but I’d say at least twice a week probably. So that really starts to add up, I think. Probably at least 100 probably. I don’t know. Okay, well that’s kind of interesting. I thought you guys were the happiest go lucky person in the batch. I was surprised to hear that from you. For me and for like I know a lot of my friends as well do feel very pressurised by their parents and having to go to the, you know, be number one and be at the top university and be at the top of the class and stuff like that. And obviously there are so many doors open at the moment that I could choose to pursue many different career paths and stuff if I wanted to. wanted it but I’m …relatively clueless as to what path they want to choose. If I knew American history then I can go potentially for New York. What American history would you do? Wild West, American Civil War. I think that’s one of those sort of funny subjects that universities aren’t that impressed with, or employers aren’t that impressed with. Cowboys and Indians? And when you get to New York you can… You did congratulate Ned, by the way. You got top exam prize. You’re killing Ned. You got the maths prize in the entire year? Yeah. How big is the year? Well, 30. I guess that’s not bad. There is a weight in the sense that you don’t want to look like you wasted your time at the school because you are kind of bestowed with all these opportunities. So I try and do as best as I can. What are your predicted grades, George? I think I’m predicted 3As. I think at the moment I’m finding it quite hard just to stay on top of work. It all just kind of builds up and before you know it you’re staying up until like 2 or 3 in the morning just drilling into this mountain of work. I just look on the bright side of life. If there’s somebody that needs help, I mean, like I said, if your brother needs a buck, give him 20 bucks. I’ve never met a greedy person in my lifetime that’s happy. It’s just the more they get, the more they want and the grouchier they get. I guess that might be another right reason I like the symbol. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I think someday you’ll think about that. You cannot make happiness. Happiness comes from within. There’s just no two ways about it. Side of God God’s made plan Five straight away Five straight away On Sunday nights, our young Old Order Mennonite folk leave their homes to come and socialize in what’s called the youth group. This is how they like to party in the evenings. They sing, play volleyball, and if they’re lucky, get to meet that special someone. So is this how you kind of spend your time? Getting together with everyone and meeting guys? Yeah, this is usually what our parties are on Sunday night. I love how you call it parties, like a party back in England. Is a party, party? Yeah, like, mad and I like to dance. And I suppose it’s nice if you attract the boys. Do you come? How many times do you get to see your boyfriends? Saturday evenings and then Sunday evenings again. Saturday evenings we talk maybe for about half an hour, like after the singing. And then Sunday evenings it’s five hours. Five hours? Yes. Do you constantly chat for the five hours then? Oh no. I mean there’s always times that there’s… I mean you can’t just talk all the time I guess. Now you have to think about what you’re going to say next. Think about what you said. Yeah. If you said it right or not. And they say silence is golden too, so… Yeah. With the girls, I just really like talking about dating because they all seem kind of really innocent about it and they’re all quite giggly. You know, they don’t seem that confident with talking to guys and stuff because they seem to be quite separated. It’s quite formal, you know, they have to do a five-hour date. and the time they spend together is really for getting to know each other. And I find back in England that sometimes you don’t really get to know the person that well. It’s just kind of on the surface, it’s only kind of skin deep. But perhaps here they really do take time to get to know who you are inside. The way we plain folk begin our courtship appears to be sparking some interest among our young British friends. Where did you meet your wife? We were in the same youth group of about approximately 180 youth. So I wrote her a letter and requested if she would want to be in a relationship with me and she answered with a letter in return. as we started dating. What did you actually write? Were you quite open with your feelings towards her, sort of from the start? It was only a couple of lines long. I mean, usually if you write a letter requesting a relationship of a girl, you’re going to have to write They generally know that you put a lot of thought, prayers into that thought before you actually write those words and send it in the mail. So if you were back home in England how would you go about asking a girl for a courtship? Back in London, James doesn’t have a Christian youth group to help him find a wife. Instead, he has a friend called Jack. She’s nice. We’re basically at the bridge where I like to take my dates. It’s kind of romantic a bit. I’ve heard that nearly 8 million people live in the same place. So you’d think it would be easy finding the right partner. I don’t want that one. Then again, perhaps not. I find it hard to approach girls, so I send Jack out. Basically, I have to sort of, like, get it started for him, and then I sort of just leave him on the spot and then I just go away. Once he’s got it started, I’m all right. And then I have the common debates and… No, no, it’s only with that one girl. In our society it’s quiet. People do use their cars to maybe impress the girls. How’d you do that with your buggy? It’s not, usually don’t try to make it too obvious, but some guys do. In my case, I did make it kind of obvious. This is like. like a crushed velvet interior and also have a sunroof up here and that one that was also custom-built. You have a touchscreen? Yes I have a touchscreen in here to control my lighting system with the strip lights on the side if I turn those We were required by law to have flashers of some sort, but I got a couple more than some of the buggies. And I also have some underbody lights on it. And with a stereo system, it would flash with the beat and all that. I never got to work with a horse’s hoof beats, but I always thought it would be pretty wild. Were you jealous? Just a bit. He only got a provision hall, and he’s pimping out his buggy. Why does he do it like that? For the girls? No, no, it’s not actually for the girls. you fold the gowns. It does obviously help a bit, but it’s not intentionally for the girls. And then it had this Ferrari. What? It had the Ferrari horse logo on the metal mudguard. This is something that I never ever associated with men and I, pimping out their car, the buggy. It’s getting more and more modern, but you’re keeping the core value of the horse. Absolutely. You’re still sitting behind that horse and still driving that horse at 10 miles an hour. So I need to take my wife home, she’s tired and we’re gonna head for home. I definitely think that having that type of buggy will definitely increase your chances of getting a date. Date class dating as a relationship, whereas dates are quite casual back home. You might go out for a date and by the end of the date you snog their face off. It doesn’t mean much I guess. The Good Book tells us, The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Our cornfields may not quite be the Garden of Eden. But it’s the land that we harvest and care for. Are these for lunch? Yep, these are for lunch. And would you say a lot of your food is kind of self-produced? Probably during the summer months, 75% of the food is self-produced. Would you say you’re content in the farming lifestyle? Yes, very much content. Why is it that farming makes you so happy? You can be happy in whatever you do. The key to happiness is love. If you don’t have love, opposite of love… Love is anger and anger is depression. If we live in anger or if we live in doubt, if a person lives in doubt, he can’t be happy. So do you feel like having a simpler life is a key to happiness then? A simple lifestyle plays a big part in happiness because stuff will not bring happiness. The more you gain, the more you have, the more you want. Being content where you are and what you have. David said yesterday that happiness comes from within. Exactly. 100% true. I think to meet someone who claims he only has 10 bad days a year, it just sounds mind-blowing. But I didn’t even know if that was, like, you know, possible. Being content for them is being pleased with what you’ve got and not being envious of what others have. I think for me, I’m always kind of wanting more, and I never feel like I’m content with what I have. It’s funny, I’ve never actually thought, like… I’ve never actually had like a serious think about what I want in life and stuff and what the bare minimum for me would be in terms of job or family life or who I am. And of course there’s no denying that a key part of our happiness is in finding our life partner. This couldn’t be done without the parlor. A specific room that exists in every Mennonite household and only used for courtship conversations. This is the eldest daughter’s domain. She can decorate it to her taste and entertain her special guests there. And when she gets engaged, it passes to her younger sister. Aww! That’s so nice. Really pretty. Once you’re dating, that’s where you have your dates. Like some of the dating rooms. Yeah, basically. How come you wouldn’t, you know… Just use your bedroom, why do you have another room for stuff like that? Well, if we have our dates in our bedroom, I think we’d be tempted. To take it farther than just a basic relationship. I don’t know, maybe because our houses tend to be a bit smaller, I’m not sure. But we tend to just have a bedroom and, you know, we would just go to our room. That’s our personal space. Do you know anyone with a boyfriend who would stay over at all? Oh no, no, zero. In our society sometimes I feel that the boys kind of want you to perhaps have sex quicker than you feel ready. Do you kind of have that peer pressure and to kind of lose your virginity? There’s nothing, no, zero. It’s just something you don’t talk about really. Is it really important for you that you take it as you know slow pace and really kind of soak up what you mean to each other then? Yes, very. It’s a matter of choice if you want to keep your purity. It depends, I guess, on how strong you feel on that subject. To the majority of the people, it’s not important anymore to keep your purity, to wait until after marriage, and therefore marriage is kind of a lost art, really. I mean, yeah, it still happens, but, you know, anymore you hear so many people, they’re not getting married until after they’ve had… Couple kids, you know, it’s just kind of, it’s really sad if you really think about it. I think keeping yourself pure shows how strong the relationship can be if you can wait. And I just wish, you know, back at home it would be like that. Because relationships should mean everything and it’s just lost. And you know, sometimes perhaps they don’t even get to know the person. It’s very much on the surface, I think. Very much. It’s not deep within, you know. It does frustrate me, actually. If you’re a virgin in England, it’s kind of like, ooh, you’re a bit weird. Whereas here, if you’re not a virgin, you’re just like, it’s disgusting. Whereas we have the pressure to have sex, they very much have the pressure to not have sex. To me, it seems a perfect way of dating. And I do envy it. I actually really do envy it. You may have noticed that we plain people cherish our marriages and our families. They’re the cornerstone of our communities. And the closeness of our community provides us much comfort and normally protects us from the world’s more surprising experiences. A lot of people seem to… To judge me quite early on because of my appearance, I was wondering what was your first impression of me? Well, a lot of people kind of judge you probably by your long hair. My long hair. Probably the band around your head. Yeah. Okay. They probably looked at that and thought, hmm, is he really going to help on the farm? The thing that’s on your lip, is it? The peer from your friends? Not really, because a lot of them don’t actually like it. Okay. But my mum was quite supportive of me getting it, and she actually came with me to get it done. Okay, so your mum was not against it? No, she wasn’t against it. Okay. But had I got it done, and she said that she didn’t like it, and she wanted it out, I would have picked it out. Then you would have made a different decision, probably. Yeah, well… I was wondering, like I said, I asked sort of… Your oldest daughter, sort of for a date, and it’s sort of the first time you’ve seen her, and I turned up with, obviously, my hair long. I’m guessing that you wouldn’t let her go on a date with me. We would probably share with her. Could you ask him to cut his… Could you ask him to take the ring out of his lip? We don’t know what’s in your heart, but usually we were taught what’s in your heart will shine on the outside. And if you would be willing to change, we have no right to say that’s not okay. What would your advice be for me if I was to ever consider marriage at this age? That’s a good question. Look for a… Very decent, not wild, but decent and sincere girl. If she smokes or drinks, then you can probably tell too if she’s a decent girl or not. You know what my mom always said? It is really funny, but it probably has something to do with. She said, if you want a nice, kind-hearted husband, watch how he treats his horse. While James learns about the art of old Mennonite courtship, the girls are being taught the art of canning tomatoes, something all Amish and Mennonite ladies hold close to their hearts. For most of us, it’s important to have a property large enough to have a garden, to raise food for our families, you know, to be able to preserve that food. We just think it’s good to learn to kind of live off the land. Then you’re not in such a pinch like when the economy goes south or something. Whilst I’ve been here I’ve noticed that everybody is an individual but you’ve come together to be in a community where you value every single person and try really hard to make sure they stay in your community. You know, riches are fleeting. What is there to riches? They can be gone overnight. It happens sometimes and so we don’t really build onto earthly riches or anything. We build a secure community for our children, the community of tomorrow. Then when the children are older, they’ll learn to work together for the good of the community. And if a community is all pulling together, you can really go places. I would say I definitely come from quite a me, me, me generation. And again, I’m not saying that Mennonite society is perfect and it’s got it completely right. But the fact they understand the value of community and they understand the value of sharing the wealth. You don’t need to always think about me, me, me. I just think it says a lot about our society, really. Us plain people believe we belong to a family much greater than the ones that simply share our houses. And every family is listed in the Mennonite directory. Someone once dubbed it the Menopedia. Mennonite Encyclopedia. It’s directory of all the members of our group throughout eight different states, I believe. Is everyone in your Mennonite community listed in that? I don’t know of anybody that is not in. When Elton asked me to be his girlfriend, I looked up his family in this book to see how old he is, how many siblings he has. I can find out a lot about anybody just by looking in here. Do you know everybody listed in this book? If I follow their family lines or look up their siblings or whatever, I never really run to a dead end. I always find a piece of the puzzle. It links together. OK, I’m going to put you to the test again. Wherever my finger is kind of closest to. Oh, yes. I know where they live. Right, who do I pick? It’s Laverne Rife and it’s Liam Rife’s son. Laverne’s mother is Mary M. Sensnig, Moses Sensnig’s daughter, and I know the Moses Sensnig family. Yeah. I went past their house. all the time when I was a girl. Can I do one? Yeah. Oh, I’m astonished. How about that one? Lester Newswanger. Oh, how many miles? They live about three miles from here. I can’t do this in Hello Pages at all. James has a soft spot for Darlene, but knows he can’t do things the English way. He needs advice on the most appropriate way to approach a gentle lady. I said hi to Rachel and we sort of spoke about dating a bit. And she said, had I turned up that day on our first day, dressed the way I was and everything, come in to ask for a date with one of her daughters, she quite happily told me yeah. I wouldn’t have been allowed. So what about you, Linda Arlene? As far as the piercings and stuff, I guess personally, you know, yeah, I definitely am not much into facial piercings. It tends to scare you a bit. I guess, have you got any advice for me that I could take back? Well, I’d definitely say it’s good to wait. You know, if you meet a girl, to me, I just think giving it time is so much more. It’s such an important step, you know, if she’s meant to be your girlfriend, I’d say she’ll wait for you. Yeah. Our English friend’s time in the gentle Old Order Mennonite world with the Burkholder family is slowly drawing to a close. I think my general perspective on a lot of things. has changed. Something that I’m clinging on to still is the idea of, you know, what makes you happy. And I wouldn’t want to make a general kind of rule, but they definitely seem to be happy and it does prove that, you know, the things that we hold high in our society is important. For example, education and being independent doesn’t necessarily make you more happy. As well as getting to know us plain people, our English friends have been getting to know each other, even though they’re from very different backgrounds. When was the last time you ate an apple? Year four, I think. Year four? Yeah, my teacher made me do it and I threw up. Didn’t like it after that. Um, I dare you. I dare, huh? I dare to eat apples. One of these. Wow. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, James. Apples to good health. Apples to good health. It seems that time spent with us plain people has inspired our friend James to try a different approach to dating. I went on a date with this girl just before I left. She seems quite nice. I quite like her. So, based on my chat with Rachel yesterday, speaking to Jay, in a letter, would be quite a good thing to do. This is definitely probably the first time I’ve ever wrote someone a letter and sort of asking them out, I guess. Because I think it shows that you’ve taken your time. But I like to think that she’ll say, yeah, but sadly I won’t sort of know till we get back to England. So, yeah, she might. This modesty thing’s really got to me. I think being surrounded by modest people has really got me thinking about some of the clothes that I wear. So I don’t actually know if I want to wear these shorts anymore. They did cost me quite a lot of money. Yeah, but you have nice legs. Yeah, but it doesn’t mean you can get them out. I definitely think Charlotte, I made her think a little bit, really, you need to wear short skirts all the time, you show so much flesh. I think it really did kind of, you know, face her being with the Mennonites here for a couple days. Obviously I still will dress to impress on a night out, but I wear a see-through shirt sometimes which shows my bra, and I don’t think I’ll be doing that. I think I’ll cover up more. And I think perhaps guys will respect me more. I just want to go out there and be totally who I am. Make-up doesn’t mean as much to me anymore, Sienna. I like what I’m hearing from you, girl. Sian, like I said, I’m very proud of you. Lots of stuff. The book of Proverbs tells us that relatives are born to share our troubles and a friend is always a friend. All dressed up in your comfortable clothing. They may look funny, dress funny, and have curious ideas about life, but our English friends may just be here to teach us something about ourselves. I’m looking at James completely different than I did when he crawled out of the van. I look at him completely different. I feel Closer to his heart. He had values and I just won’t think about him the way I did the first day he walked in. Thank you for having us. Hope to see you back sometime. I know, I got your address. Again, safe journey and God bless. I really enjoyed introducing them to my friends to see how we do as a youth group. Bye! See you. Safe journey again. It really made me appreciate what values we really have. Rural Pennsylvania is the heart of the Amish farming community. Things are done the old-fashioned way. It’s all down to horsepower here, and that’s exactly how the Zook family farm their 40 acres of corn, beans, tomatoes, and pumpkins. Becky and Ephraim have been married 14 years and have six between the ages of 2 and 13. Our six English teenagers are arriving in the thick of it. It’s harvest time. It’s definitely tomato picking. Yeah, definitely tomato picking. Nice to meet you. Hi, I’m Becky. Hello, I’m Charlotte. I’m John Mark. Hi, John Mark. I’m Martha. My husband is out baling hay. And two of the other children. The Zooks are what we call born-again Amish and take their Christian values very seriously. We’re hearing that you boys want to help. Is that how it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We usually separate like 6.30, 7 o’clock. And when does work finish as such? In the evening. That’s a good question. Before our English friends… can get to work harvesting, they need to get into more appropriate clothing. This one looks massive! Mine looks shorter than yours guys. Do you put the apron things through the hole at the back? I can tie it. Is that too tight? No, that’s perfect. A couple of the girls’ dresses were very, very short, you know. I was glad when they had longer dresses on for the children’s sake. I think I’ve done my hair really neatly. I’m well impressed. This shows that we’re learning, Hannah. Ephraim works from dawn to dusk running the family farm. They have just one week to harvest their crops of beans, tomatoes and hay. It’s all hands to the deck. And Ephraim’s trusty mules play a big part too. Hi guys. Well, my name is Ephraim Zook. Glad to meet you guys. Well, what we’re doing here is we’re baling hay. Have you guys ever seen hay being baled before or anything? No. Okay. So my goal is I need… We need to get this done before dark. So you ready to get to work? Yeah. Work up a sweat? Get dirty? Hopefully. George is going to help you, John Moore. Just be careful when you’re moving around on the wagon. You don’t want to fall off. When I’m busy and I’m looking for to get the job done, then I’m looking for people that can just come in and get in the swing and just make it happen. It’s just kind of business as usual. We have work that needs to be done, and we’re going to try to get that done. He seems quite nice, doesn’t he? I think he’s pretty cool, to be honest. I think he’s got a strong work ethic, though. Yeah, yeah, he’s definitely got that strong work ethic. I wasn’t expecting to just jump straight in, though. Bit of a tough one. Okay guys, you ready to work? The way you handle hay bills is you pick them up and you throw them. There you go. Ephraim has a workforce of one horse and four mules. He depends on them for just about everything, from the planting to the plowing to the harvesting. We value our four-legged animals for keeping us in bread and butter. And that means they need a whole lot of hay to keep them healthy too. The true test is endurance. Anybody can do half a load. Most guys can do a load. Once you do five or six loads, that proves whether you’re a man or not. They’re not too heavy, it’s just a lot of them. I’d like to think I could do maybe four or five loads. The problem with me would be my stamina. I think actually I could probably only do about two or three loads before I had to have a nap or something. It’s rare that Amish girls and boys work together. We tend to our separate tasks. Why didn’t I wear my shoes? How’s your bare feet feeling? Um, back there it was a bit of an issue, but… Well, it was hard. So we’re just looking for a little… And you kind of have to hold the stock so it doesn’t just break off. They’re very tender. It’s quite normal for us to work into the night and even miss supper. But we have to be efficient too, so there’s no room for any lightweights. The kids seem to have that natural Amish work ethic and they seem to be, you know, pitching in. I think Elizabeth had been there since four o’clock and she was still more than happy to keep on going. I think George gets chosen more for the heavy stuff because I think he looks a lot more built than us, let’s be serious here. You’re a skinny guy. I’m just overweight. George is a perfect fit, wasn’t he? Every family we meet, George is a doppelganger of someone’s cousin, sister or brother. They’ve always got some sort of relation that looks like George. What was George like? He was awesome. Oh, I didn’t get an awesome, so… Would you employ George? I probably would. Thank you. That’s flat. Possible employment for an army man. That’s good. Yeah, I think our bucket is full and it’s time to go. And one thing, just a tip, when you bend down with your dresses… Yeah. ..make sure that it’s down here, or boys and stuff, other people could just see, right down underneath there. Not the best idea. Not the best idea. Thanks for that tip. So, like, tomorrow you might be helping in the tomato field and you might want to be careful with that. We’re very careful with that, with our children and things, to be pure. As Ephraim’s house only has room for the girls, the boys will be staying with his friend and neighbour, Aaron. Actually, we’re pretty good friends and cousins and brothers. We’re actually, we have the same daddy, believe it or not. Not in the natural, though. Father God in heaven, he’s our daddy, both of us. That makes us brothers, right? So he’ll take good care of you, he’s trustworthy. It was nice to meet you. Good job, guys. See you in the morning. All right, see you. See you, Aaron. See you, Johnny. Something I noticed about Ephraim, he loves to work, or even today he sort of skipped dinner and just carried on working, even into darkness, with his bare eyes. So he is a work-soul. workaholic type guy. Home on the ferry, where does my life go? Home on the ferry, home, home, home. Well, there you go, number one hit, all the way home. Right now, Pennsylvania, here we go. We were talking about when to go to bed. It’s almost 9 o’clock now already. And we usually like to be back at the latest at 10. So if you want to shower down here. All I need to do is wash my hands. I probably just do it in the sink. I’m not as dirty as I… Where you’ll get dirty. Really? Looking forward to it. Becky, I was just wondering, out there you said you want to make sure your children are pure. I just wanted to know, what do you mean by pure? How do you define that word? A lot of our convictions are our convictions that we have, that we have gotten just on our walk with God. So we would really appreciate… You know, the character, the things you say and do, that they’re up-building for our little children. And that’s why I brought it out in the field about keeping yourself pure so that your dress covers your underparts and stuff. I think we can do that. Don’t you worry. Hannah was the one I would have guessed was a Christian before she said. So I was very excited about Hannah. Charlotte, I see her as searching. She wants to know more about God. I don’t know what I believe in and what I don’t with religion really. I feel like something is nagging inside me that I need to find out, but I’m not sure quite what it is. For Charlotte, time with the Amish has allowed her to experience Christian values for the first time. And over the last couple of weeks, she’s been exploring how she can become a good Christian. I’ve kind of made a little decision that perhaps I would like to believe in Christianity, believe in God. That makes my hair stand on end when you say that. I want to know sort of where this longing for faith kind of came from, really. It’s an empty feeling, you know, I don’t have any belief, so perhaps that would fill my emptiness and my doubt. I think that you need to really look within yourself and see, well, do I want to believe in a God that, you know, that died for me? Unlike her two English friends, Sienna is very clear that Christianity isn’t the route for her. Sienna, I would have a lot of questions for you. She was like, oh by the way, make sure you pull your skirts down because I want my children to be pure. going outside. People around, you know, the family are all very modest in what they wear and stuff so for us turning up in our dresses, maybe she’s like thinking about the society where we’ve come from and she’s scared that we’ll bring an influence. I think we have a lot to learn about this family. And we sigh, and we cry, and we ask Father, That Nebuchadnezzar spake and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has set his angels, and has delivered his servants that trusted in him. As Amish, we live by the word of the Lord. And so to set us on the right course, we like to start each day with a Bible reading. There is a decree, they’re saying that after this all happened, he made a decree that anybody that doesn’t believe the way they do, is going to be killed. The Zook family take their religious life observation one step further, with individual prayers being said at breakfast. Heavenly Father, bless you in Jesus’ name. Amen. Lord, I thank you for all the people who have opened up their homes to us. I thank you for the gifts that you have given us. Lord, I thank you for letting me be here today with this wonderful family. I also thank you, Lord, for allowing me to start this new journey and perhaps believing Christianity because it’s something I’ve always thought about, Lord. Amen. Do you think they should assume that you’re a Christian? I think so. Although I think she’ll probably ask me outright at some point because I didn’t pray at the table. How are you feeling, man? You seem quite kind of huffy and puffy. Huffy and puffy about what? I don’t think I’m huffy and puffy. You just seem a little out of sorts. Really? Well… I don’t think you’ve noticed that. Probably not noticed it and I don’t have anything in particular in my mind. As farm workers, us men need the strength and good sustenance to work hard. And we have to thank the women for providing us with our daily bread. Do you have egg beaters in England? Yeah, lots and lots of them. Do you eat your own cookies at home? My mum is really, she’s trying to get really into baking, so I think she hasn’t ventured. and done cookies yet, but she certainly makes a good vanilla or carrot cake. So where’s your dad? My dad? I don’t have one. I see. It’s quite a complicated story, really. But you have one, but you don’t know where he is? It’s quite a complicated story. Mm-hm. Well at least you have a mother that you know. Yep, my mum suffices and does everything that a man and a woman could and more. My father was in my life, but my mum had a difficult time. I haven’t lived with my dad since I was about 12, really. And now my mum looks after me, my brother and my sister on her own. My mum is small, but she’s mighty. I think that she is the most powerful woman I have ever met in my life. I am hoping you be more religious, have a bit more faith when you come back. See things my way? Probably won’t. I reckon if I’m going to take a book, which I probably should, maybe The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and when they read me a passage from the Bible, I can read… That is exactly why you’re not taking that book to the Mishland. No, Richard… Richard Dawkins is a bit extreme. I don’t think it’s appropriate, OK? OK, that told me. I think it’s important to express yourself and do your own thing. I think at all times it’s really important to be yourself. So, when you say you don’t call yourself a person of faith, What does that mean? It means I’m an atheist, which is a person who doesn’t believe in God. So what will your answer be to God when Jesus comes? Well, I don’t believe it’s going to happen, so I don’t really have an answer. I see. So what if it does happen, what’s your answer going to be? I haven’t really thought about it because I don’t really believe it. We have a good and evil book. Do you want to flip through that and try to figure out if God is real? No, thank you. You want to keep with your belief? Yep. Till you see something better, right? Not really, Becky. I think I’ve already said I grew up as a Christian. Right. So I am very, very familiar with the Bible and biblical teachings. I have, however, chosen that that’s not the right path for me. Mm-hm. Keep searching. I think at this point she just doesn’t think she needs God or whatever. That’s what I see in her. If she doesn’t know where her daddy is, she definitely has some pain because of that. Right now I’m annoyed. I think she’s got a very firm view of the way her life is and the way life should be. None of my experiences are the same as hers and we are two very, very different people, so we probably will never see eye to eye. On an Amish farm, there’s always so much to do in the day. We can’t afford to have any late starters. Good morning, Jordan. Good morning, James. So you guys ready to do some tomato picking today? You just need to get right down to it. Get down on your knees or do whatever it takes to get there. Picking these tomatoes is similar to a marriage. If the person on either side goes over halfway, we get them all picked. If we both just pick a little bit on our side, there’s a lot in the middle that aren’t. picked you know like a marriage when you both do more than your share it just works a lot better for some reason interesting i think about that when i eat my tomatoes like a marriage you might think about that when you get married too if if i think you should try tomato if you were going to ever try fruit or veg it should be here don’t spit it out Oh my god. So how’d that go over James? I can’t believe it. It’s quite nice. I don’t taste like ketchup. Ketchup tastes nicer. Ketchup’s mainly sugar. So do you think it’s the hard work and the good food that keeps you healthy? Well my personal belief is we’re a three part being. We’re spirit, we’re soul and we’re body. And when we focus on being healthy and we focus all on the body, we’re focusing on about one third. But I also believe we need to take care of the soul realm, which is our mind, will and emotions. And if we have a lot of garbage in there, a lot of hurts, a lot of anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, it will affect our health. I don’t care how good you eat. If you’re a bitter person, you’re not going to be healthy. You are eventually going to get sick. Are we good? Are we good to the end of the road? Good to the barn? Ephraim. I spoke about forgiveness and I’d love to be forgiven if I do something bad, but if someone does something unbelievable to you, I personally would have said, I think they don’t deserve forgiveness. I think Christian would say I’m quite wrong because everybody should be able to forgive. I know my mum is one of those people, but I think one thing we will never be able to forgive is… ..is perhaps what… Yeah, is what my father did to us. And what I would just do is kind of… I’d just bury that issue, really, I think. I won’t ever be able to forgive that really. Every day we thank the Lord for our good horses. For the work they do, the fun they give us, and also for bringing our Amish community together. About once a month we’ll gather at a local horse auction. Let’s try to get some speed going around here. It’s a chance for us to catch up, as well as buy a horse or two. How much would a horse like that cost? It’s probably more, two or three hundred dollars. The back one is a donkey and the first one is a pony. You can see the difference by their ears. If you look at the long ears, that’s the donkeys. It’s pretty exciting, I thought. Just when you come in and it’s so confusing and you’ve got no idea what’s going on. There’s the auctioneer. I thought he was singing. It does sound a little bit like a country song. And with horses going at $3,000 a pop, it’s not only riveting viewing, there’s a particular Amish bidding technique at work. Was he looking at us then? Did we just buy a horse? I didn’t really realise how much horses meant to them. I knew that they rode about on them, and now I really do understand that they are a central point. It was definitely more kind of exhilarating than I thought it would be. Girls, can you… Are you okay to go to bed? I think it’s time. Well, it’s like we’ve been sent to bed last night, so goodnight. I hope you sleep well. Goodnight, Jamie. When the girls and the boys hug each other goodbye… it surprises me. It’s like, why are you touching each other? Because that’s meant for husband and wife. It freaks our children out. Sleep good, Hannah. You too. Night-night. Night-night. If we see temptation getting in the way of our family or friends, we see it as our job to pass on what the Lord judges to be right. The beauty of not being together with a man sexually is how I would encourage any girl to do her dating years on earth. For me, a little hug or a little sort of high-five or, like, a peck on the cheek even isn’t sort of… It doesn’t feel wrong. Someone I know shared recently that they don’t think it would be that wrong to hold hands. It’s an affectionate thing, you know, when you’re sitting down and chatting. But then it seems to lead to other things. And I think that is why a lot of people would encourage a hands-off courtship. Don’t you think, though, if you do have, like, sex before marriage, you kind of can learn from that experience and then kind of know what you want. and then kind of when you move on to the other man, you know, your relationship will be stronger because you know what to look for in a man. Don’t you think that? No, I don’t. I think if you refuse to have sex, then it will put out the ones that want that. It’s probably a bit hypocritical for me to have had sex, but I don’t know, it felt right. Me and my boyfriend met on the internet. When I met him, we just sort of clicked and it was lovely. It did go quite fast. It was kind of like, I can’t love him now. It was a bit early for that. But, um… I don’t know, there are just some people you just seem to… Click with. Click with really, really easily. You said it was really… It was going really fast. It was going quite fast. But you didn’t seem to have a problem with it. You just went, yeah, that’s cool. I do tend to stay more at Mark’s house, mainly because I’m allowed to sleep in the same bed as him. I’m from Hackney in East London. And I’ve always been brought up as a Baptist Christian. My Christian views on marriage are completely different to other people’s Me and my mum really differ on the subject of sex before marriage For her personally, she had to save herself until marriage So I think it’s a little bit difficult for her to understand I think that God created sex for people who were in love And for something that was a connection between people So do you think that once you’ve… Once you’ve done the deed, so to speak, it’s too late to backtrack. No. You don’t think so? It’s never too late. If someone would ask and you would say, no, I’m going to wait till marriage, you can’t tell me, even if they wouldn’t kind of mock you, you can’t tell me that they wouldn’t think, hmm, Charlotte has something I want. How can she be so strong? I wish I would have that. Yeah, I know, that would be wicked. Definitely. Definitely. I’m gonna do it. I’m going to see what happens. We should try it. Yeah, I’m going to try it. Let’s do it. It’s a deal. We have little text messages, so stay away from sex yet? Yeah, it’s going to be good. It’s going to be funny. Forgiveness is a value us Amish hold very close to our hearts. Back in 2006, our capacity to forgive was seriously challenged when a local man walked into an Amish school and a tragic event unfolded. There was a little one-room school. One morning a man shows up and he had a gun and he basically ordered everyone, you know, to follow his commands. And so he got them to completely board up the schoolhouse. and, you know, like barricaded himself inside, but the teacher and one of the younger girls managed to slip out. And they ran for help. Once he starts to realize that the jig’s up, he just starts systematically just shooting them. The gunman killed ten young Amish girls before turning the gun on himself. Those parents that lost their little girls or had their little girls, you know, wounded, they choose to publicly forgive the person that did this, that just totally tore their lives apart. And to me, that’s a powerful message of forgiveness. If someone can kill your loved one, and you can actually muster up enough courage through all the pain and grief that you’re going through to actually say that, you know what? It is what it is, and I’m not going to carry that. I’m going to forgive him. We’re going to move on. To me, that’s a courageous example that we should all be able to forgive people in our lives that have hurt us. I don’t know, I think if I was one of those parents, I’d find it quite hard to say, I forgive you. But could you also agree that… ..that it will only continue to hurt you more if you don’t forgive him? Um… You are right. I do agree you’re right, but I mean… I’m a person who doesn’t find much hard to talk about, and I’m pretty open and stuff, but there are a couple of things that I don’t… Like, I find really, really hard to talk about that I wouldn’t want to ever talk about again. Mm-hm. That’s how I deal with it, I suppose. That’s how I would have been to you, usually. Yeah? You know. It doesn’t hurt me, I’m tough. Sounds so much like me. Can’t lie, yeah. But, you know, if we would never forgive… I have no idea where our marriage would be. LAUGHTER Probably wouldn’t be, yeah. Oh, dear. That’s awesome. So, no, it does take forgiveness. You’ve been… Have you had a few rough patches? Yeah, spats, big ones. Oh, certainly we can spat. Actually, we’re quite good at it. Oh, dear. LAUGHTER I think I kind of like Becky now. Who would have thought? She almost seems like a completely different person now. Or maybe she was this person, but we just had to find a way to see eye to eye. I think we do have some similarities. We’re both very stubborn, it seems. And we’re both a bit kind of… Well, I’m a bit tough, so whatever kind of attitude. That’s very true, I’ll admit to that. I can say I stand corrected now. I think that she’s got a lot to give, definitely. In the Amish community, we really value our parent-child relationship. And so many of us choose to homeschool our children. We teach them everything from math, Pennsylvania and Dutch, to buggy driving. What was the reason behind your decision to homeschool your children? Probably the biggest reason was the amount of time that they’re not with us, that they’re actually at school. And we just started doing some math and we figured out in an eight-year education they’re out of our presence for almost 10,000 hours. In a sense it may seem like we’re trying to shelter our children from everything else that’s out there and maybe that is a bit true but at the same time we realise that the early years in life are very formative years and negative influences can affect them for life. Do you guys prefer being home educated? Yeah, very much so. I don’t think I want to go back to school again. Do you feel like you’re learning the same amount or more? I’d say maybe even more. So now, where you went to school, you went to boarding school all your life or did you start somewhere else? I went to boarding school from the age of 10 onwards, pretty much. So that would be 8 years. And so how many days out of the year are you actually away from home? Um, 210 I think. So we take 210 times 16, comes out to 3,360 hours per term, times 8 years. Comes out to 26,880 hours. We thought 10,000 was a lot. I don’t think the Bible teaches us that God gives us children and we delegate the responsibility of training them out to someone else. If primarily we’re going to say, look, I’ll pay you to educate my child or I’ll pay you to babysit my child, I personally don’t believe in that. As we leave school at 14 and have been helping dad out ever since we can remember, for us boys it’s only natural to follow in our father’s footsteps. If you could have any job in the world, this is any job I’ve given you a massive free pass at, what would you pick? Kind of like construction, but I don’t know what I’d pick. Probably construction or concrete. That would be your job. Yeah. So I think back home, if I was to ask an 11 year old, if he could have any job, what he’d pick? They’d probably say a footballer, or like, I don’t know, a millionaire. That would be their job. If you had the option to never work again, but you had a lot of money, so you could do everything you wanted for fun, would you take that? Probably not. No? I’d rather work too. Yeah. What is it that you like so much about working? I guess I grew up just working a lot and I guess I just learned to like it. Even at 11 years old he’s got this real strong work ethic. You know, I think when I was 11, thinking about things like working hard is going to make it more satisfying was not something I even sort of imagined to contemplate. It was just, you know, when I was 11 I was thinking about having fun. But life isn’t all work and prayer. We recognize the importance of having some fun time with our children, too. That guy needs to have his love tank filled up. He’s just doing all kinds of basically crazy stuff to try to get attention. And all he needs is an hour or two of unconditional love, and his love tank fills up, and he’s fine. He can run off and play. Nathaniel? Woo-hoo! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I’m so thankful that I don’t find myself today in a situation married to a second or third wife. I think that’s powerful. These boys and girls that are growing up in broken homes, there’s many things that they’re not contributing to society like they could. A lot of the time, and maybe in my case, I think that the role of the man, the man never filled it ever. I personally don’t feel any worse off than anybody else, I think. I’ve done just fine and I think my life is just fine. Do you have a good home? My family home will differ slightly to an Amish family home in terms of I wouldn’t for a minute say it wasn’t as strong, but in terms of its actual logistics, my mum and dad have split up. When I was 13 or 14, my parents split up. My dad moved away. I think my mum bought us up all very well. There was five of them, so she had quite a lot of buggies. But she done it well. I wouldn’t change her, even if I could. For me, when my parents sort of split up, it was difficult, but I felt my life was still quite stressful and it was actually easier to not see him completely. I genuinely can’t remember when I last saw him. I think it was around two years ago. So how has that affected your life? It hasn’t. It hasn’t affected it? No, and I’m the same person now that I would be. Had my parents have not fallen apart like they did. How do you know that you wouldn’t be different if your dad would have continued to live there? I think one parent can do the job of two in terms of teaching moral values and things like that. I just genuinely, genuinely sort of believe that I don’t think I’ve missed out on anything. It is such a common thing back home. I think it is so, so great that… You don’t feel that you missed out. You’re not growing up with, I didn’t have a daddy or I didn’t have a mommy and therefore I’m here where I am. You don’t have that mindset. You’re going to make the best of it where you are. And I thank each one of you for that. I think that’s very great. I was quite shocked that so many of them thought that it’s just okay to have a single parent home. That’s kind of the way things are done in our country and it’s not unusual, it’s not unheard of. It’s actually okay. To me, that was shocking. I think it will motivate me to try to be a good papa because there’s many areas I can improve on, many areas. Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they’re precious in the sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. You’ve got a very angelic voice. It is actually quite angelic. There was an interesting line about black, yellow and all that white. It’s black and yellow. That’s quite interesting. I was just wondering, earlier you said something today. I just wanted to ask you why you thought that. You said something about… I know, you said that you find black people scary and I just wanted to know why… You said that and why you feel that really? Well, it’s because they’re black and I’m afraid of the darkness so… Okay. So that’s why I find black people scary. Why is that? Is that because you’ve never seen a black person before? I’ve seen hordes of black people in my life. Oh yeah? And all of them are scary? No. No? I think I’m just interested to know where these ideas came from really. Okay, let’s move on. Shocking. Yeah, one word. She’s a child but it’s quite ironic that she’s been taught a song saying that all people are equal. And then straight after she comes out with stuff like that so I don’t really know what to say really. On Saturdays we like to reward the family’s work on the farm by having some good clean fun with the community. I was sewing all day. It’s the perfect opportunity to share our food and make new friends. My name’s Junior. Hello, I’m Charlotte. And you’re Becky’s brother? Yes. And you are? Becky and I. These times are an occasion when it’s acceptable for us boys to talk with the girls and for the girls to discuss whether they’re up to date with their duties. I like housework. I love cleaning. We love housework! I reckon a chore’s a chore because it’s not fun. I usually like to race with the clock. Like time yourself. I want to get this chore done until a certain time. I’m sorry! It’s okay! No, it’s just such a good, optimistic way of looking at things that are not necessarily the best in life. Why not? Do you like housework? I like difference. I like change. I hate routine. I think that housework is routine. I’ve kind of been told I have to do them because I’m a female. In my life, every day I try to learn something new. You’re learning patience if you’re doing that. You’re good, I like your attitude to life. It’s a massively admirable attitude. Most of the Amish women, they don’t have a job. They just raise children and do their housework. Yeah, the housework is basically their job. So if you don’t learn to like it now, then when will we learn to like it? Well, this evening was definitely a stark contrast to what the rest of the day has been like. It was nice for me to be able to chat and laugh and forget about Martha’s. Strange ideas about people of different ethnicity restored my faith in this community again I suppose. Each day our day, each day our day, a golden day, a golden day. Sunday is a day we really look forward to. Not only is it the day of rest, but for many Amish youth, it’s the time they can meet the opposite sex. I’m pretty nervous because I don’t actually know, I don’t know how talkative he’s going to be and if it’s just me and him like sat in a buggy, like what do you do? Do you know what he’s looking for in an Irish bride? Vaseline. Yeah. Let’s move. Usually I take, like, quite a while to get ready, but this is the quickest time I’ve ever got ready in my whole life when I’m about to chat to a boy. Fun times! Hey. Hi, Charlotte. Hi. How are you doing? Nice to meet you, Junior. Want to have a buggy ride? Yes. Really? Oops. When you’re on a date, do you kind of think if she’s married, she’s material? Is that what you have in your mind? Yeah, I wouldn’t date a person that I wouldn’t think that I would possibly want to marry. Dating at home is… it’s not what I’d want it to be. I like the way you date and I find your way very commendable because also the whole, you know, sexual encounters, I think it’s really good that you wait until marriage. Yeah, as far as purity, I think that’s very important in relationships because it only causes heartaches and stuff. Like if people have sexual encounters before they’re married and… I am not going to have any more sex before marriage. I already feel more confident. Before I came out here, you know, I wouldn’t have thought that. But now I’ve made my mind up and I think this decision is right for me. I really can say no. As our English friend’s time with Ephraim and his family is drawing to a close, it’s never too late to raise those burning issues and put them to rest. Always! Do you have five minutes? Five minutes? Uh… Real time. Always. Can I have a quick chat with you? Sure. It’s quite an uncomfortable issue for me, and I understand it’s probably quite a sensitive issue. Like, earlier on in the week, we were out in the fields, and Martha said a couple of comments, like, well, she’s scared of darkness and she believes that… You know, she believes because of that, you know, she should be scared of black people and… And she associates them with being bad people and stuff like that. Yeah, well, I’m very grateful that you brought it to my attention. It’s certainly not my view, so I’m not sure where that came from. It’s something we need to definitely discuss with her. Have you been able to forgive her for saying that? I was really hurt at first, and I did find it quite hard to look at her and be around her. Really? Yeah, which is… I feel bad about saying it, but I felt really… really uncomfortable being in the same room as her after she said it. But I thought about it, I went to bed, I woke up, and, yeah, I was able to forgive, really. What I’ve learned in my life is that if I’m going to allow other people to hurt me by their thoughts or remarks or whatever, that’s going to be pain in my life. They’re going to walk away and they’re never going to know the difference. If someone has hurt you or there’s hurts that you’ve stuffed because I’m not going to deal with it. I’m just going to be tough. As long as they’re in there, and someone says something like that, it’s going to attach, and it’s going to bang, it’s going to trip. It’s going to trip you up. Okay, and my challenge is, and I’m not taking away anything from what Martha did. That was wrong. I apologize for that. The reason that you got offended is because of some buried hurt that’s in your life. And that one will return to England with you. unless… You get rid of it. I think you’re right. I think… And I don’t want to take you on a guilt trip or anything. That’s not my intention. My intention is only to challenge you. I know you’re open-minded and I think you’re going to find a way through it. Oh, you’re brilliant, you. You are. Well, you know what, Ephraim, I think I’m going to miss you. Thank you. Just a little bit. Early on in the week, I just couldn’t stand being here really. And now I see things a lot clearer and actually, unknowingly, I’ve kind of gone through the process of forgiveness and I feel a lot better and a lot happier. So, yeah. I don’t know what to make of that really, I just find that quite interesting. I’ve sort of been through a very important process without really realising that I have. Mm. First, I felt that there was definitely something that didn’t connect with Sienna. I think something has changed within her and if she can forgive her dad so much more things are just gonna unfold within her and yes I see a very big potential I haven’t had the best overall opinion of men and so to come here and meet so many very very good men who respect their wives and know their duties as a man and as a husband and as a father and I am astounded and very privileged to have seen that and I’m glad that I’ve seen that because it almost puts some of my Bitter feelings to rest to an extent. They’ve restored my faith Tiana if and when and if you ever do get married, would you invite us to your wedding? I’ll think about it. No, of course I’ll invite you. Get the seats at the front. Well, maybe Becky gets a seat at the front and you behind. Who says this is going to happen? We’ll pray for you. OK, do it. If we can teach our English friends some Amish goodness, we feel most blessed. I think something I’ve noticed after hanging out with Ephraim and sort of all his family is that their family bond is what sort of glues together their whole lives. It’s quite romantic just to sort of see like a family working like that. Seeing it so strong and like really stable. Their week spent with another Amish community has made some deep impressions. But some habits just don’t change. You should have heard John Martin, he goes… Oh no! Boy, they waste a lot of time. Really? I love it. Oh, I love it. He’s right as well. He’s so right. And sometimes the most unexpected friendships are made. Yes, thank you for everything. Thank you for getting me to do this. See you, Sianna. You take care of yourself. Give me that look. Come here. You’re too tall. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, darling. You be good, OK? One thing I’m going to miss is just sitting down and taking time out to just have some of these interesting conversations. And that really makes you search and makes you think, what do I really believe? You know, what really is the truth in this? I think I’m going to miss that. That was kind of fun. We have decided that we are going to have no more sex until we’re married. I almost feel like you’ve just made this decision and almost in the heat of the moment that Becky said something to you. No, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Do you think some boys back in England will run a mile once I say no? I’m sure they will, but if they do then it kind of shows they’re immature and you wouldn’t want to be with them anyway. Me personally, I’m not open to that type of violence. Where are we guys? We’re in intercourse. Intercourse with each other. No, we used to be over here. I sincerely hope that in the time spent with us Amish, our new friends will have plenty they can take back home with them to England. From the great rewards of working hard and working together, to the simple pleasures of a plain life, and having faith in your heart and family close by your side. As the teenagers prepare to leave the Amish, they’re going to meet some families who have also left the Amish, but have decided to keep much of our plain, simple way of life. And I pray that after meeting them, our young friends might choose to do the same. First up is a Miller family from Richland County. They’ve recently left their church, but they hold many of the traditional Amish values close to their hearts. We have 13 children all together, ranging in ages from 28 to 2. Martha being the 28-year-old, and Josiah the 2-year-old. Okay, this is my room, and two of you girls can sleep in here. Your room is amazing. My room isn’t always this cool. I like this, Martha. As soon as I walk into an Amish home, I feel like I should change, because I just feel bad. I’m so scared. Even though it’s me, I just, I don’t know. It’s quite strange. Can’t say I’m with you on that. Let’s transform, girly-wirly. After leaving their old order church, Martha and two of her sisters are now joining a local new order church, so they continue to follow the Amish rules, such as those on Modesty. I like to see them without their makeup. And as far as their clothes, showing breasts and wearing too short of a dress, that would feel like I might be tempting some man to lust after my own body. Hey there Amish dress. I love this dress. You love the dress? Put it on the wrong way round. My sister wore her out too. Oh I always do this to myself. That does not look right. Well you’re looking this way. Oh that’s Andrew’s right, yeah. Without the Amish church for guidance, families such as Ira’s must find their own way of doing things. things. more around not what we’re used to when it comes to Amish clothing. So which of your family drive? Andrew, me and Dad. Do you like driving? I drive, like, an hour and 20 minutes every day to work. How long does that take on a horse and cart? Probably around… I wouldn’t… Probably six hours, maybe. I think I’m finding it a bit confusing. They’re, like, halfway between, like, being Amish and not being Amish. Would you call this family Amish? I don’t know them well enough to decide if they’re Amish or not, but you don’t have to. to live in a stone age. They like this sort of slow paced life, but you can have a slow paced life with technology. It’ll be interesting to find out, we’ll chat with Ira and see what he sees himself as. Meal times are an important part of our day. We give thanks and eat together, no matter how many of us there are. How big are your families? Just me, my brother, my sister, and my mom. We live in London. You’re in the town of London? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So how do you feel about them? The quietness of the countryside. I like, you know, sort of having slow-paced life, but I can’t have it as a permanent thing. I really like being busy. But you were raised that way too, because when you’re used to the quiet of the countryside, you cannot. City life does not appeal to you. All of us Amish live by… Rules made by the church. These are set out in what we call the Ordnung. You could see it as a sort of guide to the way we live. The mound goes straight down, just kind of work it back and forth. Ira Miller fell out with his church by questioning the rules of the Ordnung and decided to move his family to another state. But as far as I can see, in most ways, he’s still living the Amish way, plain and simple. Which kind of aspects of your life? would you say are still Amish? I’d say most of it. It’s still a part of our life. It’s still so many things that we don’t want to really leave. We want to instill that in our children too. I was wondering if you could explain the kind of… the technology sort of rules in your house as such. To deal with having technology in the house or not having it is where we find our biggest battle in life, because when we were in the Amish, we had lines. Where we knew we had to be, when you’re removed from an Amish church system, you’re forced to daily make decisions. To live this kind of lifestyle without a church is actually a challenge on our part. Becky Schrock was raised in the strictest and most secretive order we know, but just like the Millers. Her family eventually decided to leave the church. Okay, so boys, this is Becky. So nice to meet you. Becky still has relatives inside the community and has agreed to take our teenagers deep into uncharted Amish territory. Where I grew up, have you ever heard of the Schwarzen-Tuber Amish? What is it? Schwarzen? Schwarzen-Tuber? They’re probably the most traditional, the most conservative that you’ll find around here. No electricity, no power, no shower. outhouses. What you’re going to do this afternoon, I have some cousins that are excited to see you. And it’s actually pretty amazing that you get to go to a place where they still live like that. A hundred years ago, the Schwartzentrubers decided they wanted to live an even simpler life than the rest of us Old Order Amish, with even fewer newfangled gadgets. So they broke away from us and started their own group. Not many people get to meet the Schwarzentruber’s, as they live a separate life, cut off from the rest of the world. In fact, they’re so cut off that even we Amish hardly know them. Levi, Jerry, and Ben are three young men who have lived in the Schwarzentruber Amish all their lives, but have begun to question some of the strict rules laid down by their church. I’m Jerry Schrock. I’m Jordan. Nice to meet you. James. Nice to meet you guys. I’m Jordan. I’m Levi. Nice to meet you. We don’t meet people from another country every day. This is like a first for us. We’re from the bottom of the Amish church which is like the strictest. Yeah, that’s the word. What makes it such a strict order? We can start on it. There’s a long list of rules. There’s a long list of rules. They’re very strict, really. They pretty much control everything, from our clothes to our houses that we live in. They even have a rule on how wide your hats brim is supposed to be. Well, basically, we decided to do some camping over the weekend. We’ll get them set up, and then we’ll cook us some supper. If the bishops or the elders of the Swarthman Troubadour Church knew. That we were talking to your teenagers, they would really, really frown in disbelief that we’re doing something like that. Let’s have a short little prayer. We Amish believe that you should seek the good Lord’s will in all you do, and that He will show us the path to take. Our teenagers are spending some time with people who have decided to leave their Amish church, but still choose to follow the simple life we cherish. Was it a big shock going from that strict community and then kind of being free from this kind of box? Yeah, it was. It took us a while to sort of, you know, come out of the box. It takes a while till you want to try things. At first it was almost like scary, you know. Since we do have phones, especially, our lives have really sped up. Because when you, before, if you wanted to do something on a Friday evening, you’d better get a letter in the mailbox on Monday morning. at the latest. How does it make you feel that, you know, everything’s kind of speeding up in a way? It makes me feel like everything’s out of control and I don’t… I mean, it’s just like life is just flying by or throwing things at me and I can’t cope with them that fast. You’re so used to just your laid-back life and it’s really hard to not just get all worked up or when things just go by so fast. I mean, you… You can leave the Amish, but it takes a while for the Amish to leave you. Becky was raised as a Schwarzentruber. They are known as the Amish Order with the toughest rules of all. She sent the boys to meet up with their Schwarzentruber cousins, Levi and Jerry, who are themselves now questioning some of the rules laid down by their church. How often do you go camping? I’ve only went camping once. It’s something that goes against the rules to go camping. I’m surprised that the rules are so strict. They even extend to camping. Like we said, there’s going to be a long list of rules. Do you break a lot of rules or not really? I guess to tell you the truth, if they’re looking, yeah, we try to follow the rules. But if they’re not looking, then we kind of do what we have to do. You know, if you break them… Enough of the rules or you get kicked out of church. Then your family and your parents are supposed to shun you and they’re not supposed to associate with you. Both of us, we have been kicked out of church. If we don’t come back to them and repent to them, we really can’t be with, you know, in their church. The fact I go to Eton and obviously it is an institution and there are rules which you have to follow but I feel like the rules of my school there is always like a reason of you know you know I can I can make sense of it all but here it just like yeah it just seems nonsensical it seems illogical that they have these ridiculously rigid rules. Father in heaven thank you again for this wonderful Beautiful, lovely day that we’re seeing that this is coming to an end. Amen. It’s really good. It’s important, I think, to have a family meal. We don’t eat in shifts. It’s just, can you imagine what it would be like for my mom? She’d be like running a restaurant or something. Becky, how big is your family? My mum and dad had 12 children. 20 years of childbearing. Sounds stressful. They call themselves progressive, which I really like, but they have got the kind of typical Amish things, you know, they’re rural living, you know, they grow their own vegetables and things like that, and they’ve got a really big family, and I’ve come through the few weeks learning that there are just… you know, fundamental things that make you Amish, they seem to feel it in their heart to me. Now we Amish take our rules really seriously, and when someone refuses to follow them, the punishment is excommunication, which we call shunning. What does it actually mean to get shunned? What are your limitations? You can’t eat with your family, like your parents, like… They can’t accept anything. Like if I’m holding this cup, he wants it. I can’t hand it to him. Or if I’m holding my little baby girl, he can’t get her from me. When we go to church, we have to kind of sit in the back. It’s kind of funny because right now it’s like half the church is sitting in the back. Like half of us are being shunned right now. How did you get to this situation now? Why we’re excommunicated is because of him. Because of me? We stood up for you. He bought a machine to cut pallet boards. They actually came to the sawmill and looked at this piece of equipment to see if it qualifies. This piece of equipment is not run by any electric, it’s run by a gasoline engine. Then after a while they decided there’s a part on this piece of equipment that needs to come off. So some of us youngers just said, no, we’re not going to put up with that. And they said, well, it can’t be in our church anymore. Do you still have to follow all the rules or you’ll have to sort of do more or less what you want? We necessarily don’t have to follow the rules. It’s up to us, but they still want us to follow the rules because they actually want us to come back and repent to them. We are supposed to feel guilty. They put us in this situation, you know, because we stuck up for what we thought was right. I definitely had, you know… Huge amount of sort of admiration towards these four. And, you know, they’re like a group of radicals. And even though they’re being shunned by their family and shunned by their friends, they have to go against everything they’ve been taught. So obviously that requires a huge amount of courage. Jordan, time to get up. Day’s started, we’ve got eggs and bacon going for you. Should be good getting to know them a bit better. Obviously last night there was a lot of negative connotations, so I’m kind of intrigued what the positive pulls are of the Swartzen Trubach group. So are we going fishing today? Yeah, there’s a pond just back there a little bit. Nice, nice pond. Is there like an Amish limit on how many you catch per one? Not really, no. It’s the one thing we’re not restricted on. That’s good. There’s no rule on that then. No. Leaving the Amish is not something we do lightly. It often means leaving your loved ones behind. After questioning the rules of his church, Ira uprooted his family and moved them to another state. You know, it’s quite interesting because, like, for instance, Martha Howard… How old are you again? 28. Because you’re the first that I’ve met so far who’s over 21 and haven’t been engaged or with someone who they’re going to marry and stuff like that. Has no one ever caught your eye or anything like that? Oh yeah. She’s like, you’ve gone with a guy for how many years and they broke up? When we lived in Wisconsin for two years before we moved here. And he didn’t want to come with us. He chose his family over me, so. But it was hard for him. And it was hard for me, too. But I respected him and his choice. She did have to leave loved ones behind and I know how I’d feel, you know, if I had to leave my family all behind and had to start a new life and it would just, it would be awful and, you know, I could really feel that Martha, it was extremely hard for her and I completely understand that. You know that your brother drives a vehicle. Would you say that, you know, he doesn’t believe in the Amish way of life as much as you do, perhaps? I don’t really know because he is obviously, he has more of the technology that I don’t want a part of. Well, my brothers are on Facebook. Do you wish that your brothers kind of didn’t have that option of interviewing? I do. It makes me sad because I think, what an opportunity. As a young teenager to spend all that free time that they have, how happy I would be to spend all that time they spend on their phones just studying the Bible. And I’m like, guys, you’ve got such an opportunity. You’re living under Dad’s roof. You don’t have to support yourself. You might as well be doing these things instead of those vain, empty things. What do you think has tempted them? It’s exciting to explore all the different aspects out. there you know all those on YouTube once they get on YouTube or on Facebook checking everything it takes a lot of time and it’s interesting it’s I don’t know I don’t know but I had to try it out for myself to know that I would rather have the life I had been living in the Amish Church we are taught that God created woman to be a helper to men when Ira challenged the church Martha followed her father as the head of the family. It was a very hard situation because they excommunicated us. And even now, most of our family, we can’t, I can’t be back and forth with each other. And it’s hard. My mom, she came from a family of 14. Most of her sisters, we can’t be together. And look at how our family, we miss our family. When we Amish lose a member of our flock, we always leave the doors open in the hope that they’ll return. We can come back to the church. but we would have to come to them, to the leaders, and confess that we were wrong. And also prove to them that we are willing to follow their rules. It’s a very hard decision to make, whether we want to go back and try to police the Amish or do what we think is right. What’s that? It’s a crappie. Now that’s a nice crappie there. You still seem to be following most of the strict rules and regulations. I was wondering why. There’s rules I still follow, and there’s rules I don’t. I don’t have a problem to wear these kind of clothes, so I guess that’s why I’m still wearing the clothes. But when it comes to work, I don’t agree that everything has to be done with hand tools. I mean, I don’t see it wrong driving with a vehicle to go to work or to go to town to do shopping and that kind of stuff. The way I see it, you’ve got to use common sense what you do, I guess. There are many good things about the Amish way of life. The family values, the cultural values, the friendships that can be created and things like that. When we hear about all these issues, we kind of think, surely you just break away straight away. But it’s just never quite as easy as we think it might seem. The girls must now say goodbye to Martha and her family. Oh, I feel that the stay was too short. I know, it was too short. This is a devotional book. for every day of the year. Oh, that’s perfect. Thank you so much. Hopefully it’ll help you in your journey to walk with the Lord. Bye, girls. They’re now off to Ashland County to meet up with the families of the SchwarzenTuber men who’ve been out camping with the boys. Cousin Becky has arranged to meet them there and show them around a genuine SchwarzenTuber house. Knock, knock. Hello. Hello, I’m Sienna. Nice to meet you. Hello, your name is? Mary. I’m Lena. Lena, hello, name is Sienna. Yeah, it’s kind of nice to be back in a sports and trooper house again. It’s been a while. The rules state that the houses should have no decoration, all the curtains must be of a dark color, and there must be no electricity or running water. Okay, this is the dry thing, what we use to do our dishes. We’ve got like a pump to pump the water. So when you’re done with the water, would you just put it outside somewhere? Yeah. You can just grab the bowl and go for it out somewhere. Just anywhere. That’s your bathtub? Yeah, this is the bathtub right here. We bring it in here and heat the water on this right here. How long would this process of making a nice hot bath, how long would it take to get it all ready? It’s hard to finish. It takes a couple of hours to do it. It’s such a long thing, right? So what do you use to take the baths at home? We have a walk-in shower that you just stand there, turn it on and… It seems like it shouldn’t be so hard to take a bath, but I guess it’s just one of their rules that that’s why they do it this way, you know. Right here, this is our outhouse. There’s two of them and there’s a small one like for little kids. So two people would just sit there and do their thing? Yeah. I need my privacy when I go to the toilet. Yeah, it’s a private time. You take so much for granted. Yeah, massively. In Genesis, God said, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, which makes hunting one of our favourite pastimes, no matter how small the prey. OK, boys, we’re going down to Woods now to go squirrel hunting. Have you guys ever been squirrel hunting? No, I haven’t been. No? So is hunting part of the Amish life then? I think it’s part of the Amish life. To me, it’s just so nice to be out, you know, get out here, just enjoy the outdoors. If they would do away with some of their rules and make my life a little bit easier, I’d have a hard time walking away from it, you know? I think we’ve been talking for long enough. The squirrels are probably just running wild over in those at a hill there. We’ll go ahead and start walking down this trail here. I was out here this morning. I shot two squirrels right in this area this morning. For dinner. They were a little bit on the small side, but they were pretty good. Do you only really get one shot for the squirrel? Actually, the one squirrel, it took three shots for the one squirrel, and then the second one only took one shot. You hear one? Yeah, I hear one. It might be a chipmunk. Chipmunks also make that sound. I’m going to walk up here a little bit and then I think we’ll just sit up here for a little while. How do you eat the squirrels? I like to fry them in a frying pan for about 15-20 minutes or something like that. One squirrel might be enough for about one person for about one meal. My dad used to hunt and then my oldest brother. My brother started hunting when he was around 12 years old. I remember years ago, my dad had a real good hunting dog. I mean, we could take that dog out and he would get on a rabbit trail and he would I wouldn’t get off that trail until we had that rabbit. Do you miss being able to go hunting with your dad? That’s just one of the things that you’re going to have to deal with when you get into a situation like this. So yeah, I do miss it. These guys seem to be kind of stuck right in the heart of the most conservative and the most traditional Amish order. They’re having to fight against the rules and regulations and have been shunned by a family. It’s quite a big price to pay, I think. So clearly they’re going through a very, you know, an impossibly hard decision. The devil makes work for idle hands. So with the boys now back at Jerry’s homestead, there’s a chance to brush up on some hunting skills. Bullseye right in the center. You’ve got quite a lot of problems with the church at the moment. Would you say you’re being quite rebellious going against them? If you would ask the Swarthman Trooper leaders of our church, I’m sure they would say I’m rebellious, but the Swarthman Trooper rules are not based on the Bible. If they’re not based on the Bible, then I have a hard time to follow their rules. You wouldn’t say you’re being rebellious. You’d sort of maybe think you’re within your right to disagree with what they want you to do. If you decide to leave the church, will it be hard for you if you can’t see your parents? you know, me and my wife, we do realize, you know, it’s going to be difficult. I just can’t agree with it anymore. I think I can relate to them in the idea of being sort of away from your family. I don’t see my dad. That’s a conscious decision from my behalf. I mean, if I wanted to, I could see him. But I think if they were to stay away from the Swatch and Juba church, I think they’d miss their family. It would be a… It’d be a very hard decision to make. It’s a blessing for us Amish to live on the fruits of our labour, and nothing must go to waste. Lena, who is married to one of the Schwartz and Trubber revels, has roped Becky and the girls into some traditional Amish housekeeping. So what is it about Amish lifestyle that you’ve kept and that you still enjoy? This. Canning. Canning. Yes. I’ve done canning for quite a few weeks now, and if I’m being brutally honest, I find it really dull. Like, you know, it’s maybe fun for novelty or something. If you have big families, it takes a lot of money to eat out of the supermarket. I would say it’s the direct opposite of the outside American society. It’s trying to save as much as you can, whereas we’re more about spending as much as we can. It’s not just food. It’s more like dressing the best. Having the best car and having the best house. Survival of the fittest, that includes being the biggest, the best. I mean I still have all the sort of of good things that I appreciate from what I’ve grown up with and a lot of times we’re too consumed with the things we want to see what we have and I think the quality of life doesn’t lie in having the best of everything. We’ve introduced our English friends to many of our favorite Amish pastimes. It’s also interesting for us to find out what enticements may be found in the outside world. I’ve got my iPod with me. iPad, okay. Do you want to listen to it? Yeah, I mean, I’d like to. I’ll give you one and it’ll be quite loud. That is some music! What kind of music do you call this? I think that’s rock. I don’t think it would be my favourite music. Do you have a mobile phone? Yeah, I’ve got a phone. Do you have it with you? I do, yeah. One of the applications I’ve got on here… is an app for Twitter. Twitter, okay. Do you know what Twitter is? Twitter, I really don’t know. I really don’t know anything about that. You write something on there, which you decide to share with the world. Do you want to write a tweet? Well, to who would I write it to? That’s it, they’re very open things. You don’t write it to anyone, but you write it to, I guess, everyone. What do you think, given the chance, in this box of 140 characters, you’d write? I’d probably write what I’m doing right now, that I’m sitting next to a couple guys that are from another country. Obviously, you could probably spend a lot of time on there, which time nowadays seems to be kind of valuable sometimes. Okay, I’ll bring it over here to the post. There’s technology that I wouldn’t bother too much with as far as modern and pleasure and that kind of stuff. No, I don’t have a desire in that. My usage of my phone has definitely sort of declined after being here for so long. I sort of turned it on and then I was sort of bombarded with messages and stuff that I wasn’t really that interested in. So I think I definitely have, um, not fell out of love with it, but you know, um… Maybe we sleep on different sides of the bed. Would you like to try on the body? I’ll put it on. I wouldn’t want to wear it every day, but I’d definitely put it on just to see what I look like. Let’s see how it fits me here. Oh, first time I’ve seen an Amish in a pink sweater, I think. There we go. So that’s, actually that’d be kind of nice at times, but you know, if you’re working, wouldn’t you get dirt in these pockets here? But yeah, I like the cuffs on it. That’s a nice feature you got. And this here, is this a hood? I could put it over my hat. I have to take my hat off. Like this here, huh? So I could do like this. Yeah, it’s like an arm agenda. So I can do like this? Yeah, like an arm agenda. Any good Amish woman will tell you that a day spent canning beans and quote making is a day well spent. Makes perfect sense to me, but our teenage friends have decided to show cousin Becky and Lena how they like to spend an afternoon back in England. I really have not been to a lot of huge shopping malls in my life. It must be nice for you, especially to have that freedom to just get what you want, really. You know that you can have it now. You know there’s not many restrictions. Yeah, but it’s also more responsibility, I guess. Yeah. what do you think the look of it all right I mean I haven’t been inside yet so well the outside though it’s like not to choose from isn’t there This is an example of something that you might like but don’t necessarily need. You don’t need a phone cover. Phone covers, why would you want to cover the phone? You have to take it out to use it, I think. No, most people just think it looks kind of cool. Yeah, it’s interesting but I don’t really go for it. Not into it. You put them in your belly button. Oh! Not me! I don’t know, I’ve never been into a piercing thing. I never really thought that was so cool. I’m just starting to feel depressed. Why are you feeling depressed? You know what it makes me feel like? All these things are out there to get you. It just drives me nauseous. I don’t know. what else but notches. You have all this stuff just because I know how it is not to have all this stuff it’s so much more simple. You walk past and just like oh that is so nice I wasn’t gonna get it but I got it anyways now because I just saw it. It gets me actually because when I walk past an advertisement of a girl and she’s dressed really nicely and her makeup’s amazing you kind of think in your mind like actually I’d like to look like that. I am always wanting to look better because it gives me the Confidence in it, and I know it shouldn’t be like that, but it’s really hard to get it out of my head. Being with Amish, I actually realised that I am a bit obsessive about the way I look. You talk about freedom, you talk about being free from the restriction that I grew up with, but when you come out, there’s so much choice, and you can also be restricted by that, it can kind of consume you. And so that’s not freedom either. So really, where is freedom? I think it all comes down to the choices you make. Obviously, you can choose what you want to live for, what’s important in your life. I mean, take Charlotte. Is she free or is she enslaved to following fashion and trying to measure up to the standards of people around her? The decision to leave any Amish church is the biggest any of us will ever have to make. And as head of his family, Levi has much to consider. What are your sort of plans for the future? Do you think you’re going to rejoin the church? Right now in my mind, I’m thinking to someday… be away from the Swartham Troop Amish church or any kind of Amish church. So you’d like to leave the churches completely? Yeah, yeah. If in my mind, you know, I’d like to completely leave the Amish church, to be honest with you. Are there parts of maybe an English lifestyle you’d like to maybe embrace? Right now, what I’m thinking is, you know, if I completely leave the Amish, you know, I’d kind of like to take… the Amish culture and mix it in a little bit with the English culture. I think that would make a real good life or a real good thing. Ideally, I’d like to think that he does get to create this English-Amish mix. I think it’s going to come down to how his family responds to to his proposition of moving out of the church. We already know, you know, we already kind of know what the situation is going to be, you know, if we do decide to leave the Amish. You know, my dad, he would hardly talk to him. Well, I mean, he talks a little bit, but he would hardly talk to him, you know. I think if I was posed with not seeing my mum, I think I’d find that quite a scary thought almost. My dad, on the other hand, it’s sort of… You know, I don’t see him through choice as it is. Was there like a divorcement or anything? Or is… Yeah, yeah. What you’re talking about is something that we Amish never had any experience with, you know. In England, I don’t know a lot of people who don’t see any of their parents. Although you might not see divorce, we don’t see excommunication. That’s really interesting to realize that an Amish guy like me, or an English guy like you, you know… has to deal with the same circumstances in some ways, you know. It’s almost time for our young guests to leave behind their newfound friends and head back to England. In fact, these young Schwarzentrubers may soon be on their own journey. They still wish to follow the Bible and lead a plain life, but to be set free of some of the rules of their strict Amish order. I definitely think that, you know… They won’t ever forget their core values of living an Amish lifestyle. I envy it actually. They value the most important things. But I just think it would be so much simpler if they could just switch a light bulb on or just turn a tap. All the folks have gathered back at the Schwartzentruber homestead for a final evening of fun and frolics. What do you think of our outfits? To be as honest as you like. Yeah, I think they’re great. It would be great to wear them or, you know, I would definitely try that out. Oh, awesome! This here is a Sunday dress and would one of you girls want to try it on? Well, if I did mine, you can try mine on if you want. I didn’t really expect her to just, oh yeah, I’ll try it on. She was probably thinking, oh, I did that many times behind people’s backs. You guys look very innocent. You do! It’s so small and she’s a giant. I think it’s cool. Would you be comfortable in something like that if you were not backed by the rules? To get used to it, I probably wanted a little longer. You know, before I walk around with too short ones. Yeah. Wow, look at the imagine! Look at that! Look at the kukula, though! Oh, no. I don’t think it’s funny. Why? It was different. I mean, I’ve never seen her wearing clothes like that. You know, my honest opinion on it, you know, I wouldn’t want to see a short dress like that, you know, on my wife, I guess. Except I like my clothes. Well, you can have a bag. Now you’re at this kind of stage and almost at transition point, what would you say you’ve discovered? To me, Amish seem to be very, or they can be very smart and talented. Right, yeah. If they want to, you know. But they don’t have a lot of opportunity to sort of develop it. There’s a lot of people that jump the fence and just go completely wild. They just throw everything out and they just totally rebel. We all at one point in time saw that there’s more to life than just being rebels. I really think that we took a turn for the better. And I’m glad we did. I really enjoyed to be around you. Eroy, George. I love the way the Amish live their lives and they see how strong of a connection they have with things that are really valuable instead of make-up and clothes. And I think that’s the main thing that I’m going to take from living with the Amish. Goodbye. Well, nice to meet you. What we’ve learned has been quite special because I think a friendship was formed between all of us. Bye. Thank you. And although it was quite a short trip, meeting them, it was a goodbye where I actually felt like I will miss them because they were genuinely nice people. I think I learned quite a bit from them. It was quite an experience. I was just so happy that they got to experience this, that actually real people still live like this. I really hope that they learn things that they can sort of apply to their own life. I believe someone wise once said that it is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end. With our friends now back in England, we hope they have taken much from their own journey and will forever keep a little Amish in Living with the Amish and watching their work ethic and how they, everything they do they put as much as they can into it, there’s no half heart in it. I think that’s definitely had a direct impact on the way I view my work ethic. I’m getting up earlier. It feels nice to be up in the morning and actually have breakfast and not lunch. And I think it’s going to have a really sort of positive effect on the way I approach whatever I do in the future. I was put in a role. I was very much the woman. And we are making pies and snacks for all the men to eat. Which was really, really, really difficult to deal with. There came a point when I just had to learn to just listen to other people. It’s everything I knew it would be. It’s disgusting. It’s disgusting, it’s horrible. So even if I didn’t agree with it, I could at least understand where they were coming from. And that’s something I’m still trying to put into practice here. Be them Amish or be them conservative, whatever, anyone I disagree with, their views are just as important as mine. When I was out there, the Amish were doing all the chores. It kind of rubbed off onto me. I am washing up right now. Not very often I do this. I’d want to be a part of it, because they had quite a big passion for it. You can have this Bible. Read it every day. Being surrounded by people who believed in God so strongly did rub off onto me. I’m very excited for you, very excited for you. When I got home I must admit I didn’t continue reading the Bible but I still do kind of pray and it does help. Hi! Nice to meet you, Junior. Want to have a buggy ride? Yes! I found it really beautiful how they’d keep their virginity until they were married, and it just really inspired me to kind of follow that. I’m going to do it. I’m going to try it. Let’s do it. You know, I kind of saw how people’s relationships were and how lovely they were. You don’t kiss on days like this? We have a hands off, unfortunately. If we ever marry or anything like that, it would be more special. While I’ve been at uni, I haven’t met a guy and I haven’t had sex with a guy. Me and Mark talked about it and he was kind of like, whoa. We’ve had sex. I’m not doing anything wrong. I don’t think God would condemn me. Does it feel like God’s far away sometimes? Mm-hm. I understand that. Before I went to live with the Amish, I was at a place where I really doubted God. You know, the fact that the Amish do have such strong faith and, you know, they really see something worth believing in, it’s something that, for me, is very important. I think my general perspective on a lot of things has changed. How many bad days do you have a year? I don’t know, I would have guessed probably ten. They do seem to reach that kind of natural ability to be content and to be happy. They seem to reach that level a lot easier than we do. How many bad days do you have in a year? I’d say at least twice a week, probably. From the experience it does seem to suggest that the simpler life is happier. Something I’ve taken with me from my time with the Amish is you need to look presentable. I thought to sort of adopt an Amish hairstyle would be a good sign of a thank you. Don’t cry. Keep going. Don’t cry. Since I’ve been back, my work ethic for me has improved quite a lot. I went straight back to college. I enrolled Monday. I started on Tuesday. Have you got any advice for me that I could take back? The day inside of what I learned from the Amish has massively changed the way I used to do. Well, I’d definitely say it’s good to wait, you know. If she’s meant to be your girlfriend, I’d say she’ll wait for you. I learned after the Amish to take things a lot slower. I definitely think a lot more about the girls, their feelings a lot more. I think seeing them and their families and they’re so happy that if I do have a wife, I mean I would have to have that one like the Armour Trap, it would be nice. nice to settle down and it would be nice for my children to have both parents there. Living with the Amish has been the biggest wake-up call and the best wake-up call I could ever have. I think I made some really amazing friendships and met some amazing people. After sort of living with the Amish and viewing their strong sort of bonds and all their family, I decided to sort of start talking to my dad again and I got back in contact with him. It didn’t happen the day I got back, it was something that I reflected on. I think hanging out with the sports YouTuber were quite a full frontal part in the whole sort of reconnecting thing. I just think that idea of how they want to see them but they can’t and I just thought maybe I should be making the most of it. If it was nice to sort of reconnect, it’s been a long time, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. It’s trials and I lay me down to sleep, having thanked the Savior for His love and favor, trusting in my soul to keep. In my little dreamboat I go sailing to the land across the pond.

Six British teenagers leave their mobile phones, Facebook accounts and partying behind, as they head to Ohio and Pennsylvania to see if they can cope with six weeks of hard work and simple living amongst six families in the Amish community. They swap their iPhones for hymn books and their modern clothing for bonnets, braces and conservative Amish hats. The experience is a radical departure from the way teens live their lives in contemporary Britain, and requires a readjustment to a world of gas lamps, horses and carts, manual labour and communal hymn-singing. Will the experience help them find God or, just as importantly, discover who they really are as individuals?

00:00 Episode 1
45:36 Episode 2
01:30:34 Episode 3
02:15:32 Episode 4
03:00:13 Episode 5
03:45:30 Episode 6