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Went with several other missionaries today to Kalona, Iowa to visit an Amish/Mennonite community for the day.  What a fun place to go visit.  Here's what we saw and participated in.

Started out at the Kalona Historical Village Visitors Center.  It's a couple of hours North of Nauvoo.

They have a lot of family items to look at but some very beautiful handbuilt quilts adorn the walls.

This one was obviously one of Arlene's favorites 'cause it's purple.  The detail work was absolutely stunning.

My favorite...

They had moved the old buildings to an enclosed area for us to look at.  My Dad would have loved looking at this old railroad station since he was raised in one.  'Course, it would have needed to say "Soo Line" on it to make him really happy.

We had to picture Mom in front of the old Kalona Post Office just to bring back some recent memories.  But, I'm not thinking she really wants to go back to work.

Walking through town we found chocolate!  Mmmmm...good stuff....

...and ice cream...

Downtown Kalona had no abandoned storefronts like we've seen in every other town we've gone through back here.  This town is thriving and has lots of people here conducting business.  

Proving we were in Kalona!

Touring the site, we were introduced to how the Amish do laundry without the modern convenience of using electricity.  The Mennonites use the modern things of today but the Amish don't.  And there are different levels to the Amish culture also.  See anything in there you fancy?

An Amish "outhouse".  It's a cell phone at the end of the road, solar powered, and is checked once or twice a day for important messages from family by several families in the neighborhood.  Obviously, they don't have phones in their homes.

This is an Amish pickup.  Not sure if it's a Dodge RAM or not.  But it's got One Horsepower!  We're traveling through the countryside in a large van so we can see the sites.

Stopped at a store with interesting remedies for what ails ya.

Stopped at JK Creative.  They do wood crafts and make them in the back.  Nothing from Taiwan or China.  All made on the premises.  Problem is, they don't take credit cards so that gorgeous, handcrafted wooden chest with the velvet lining that was $330 had to stay.  I don't carry that kind of cash.  If you're wondering where all of the American craftsmen are these days, here are a few of them.  The stuff is beautiful.  Not cheap, though.  All wood, natural colors, no coloring to the wood.  

Inside the showroom.  A couple of our Sister Missionaries admiring their wares.

I had to quick snap this.  This young Amish kid is hauling goat's milk to someplace.  They use goats because they can milk 2 goats at once using the same milking machine as they would for a cow.  Goats only have 2 udders (teats).  Cows have 4.  Get it? 

This is a typical garden on one of the farms.  A nice one, though.  The gals usually are barefooted when they are working in them.  You "Camino-ites" notice anything different here?  NO FENCE!  They use Marigolds to keep the rabbits out!  I asked if they had deer in the area.  "Yes, we have deer."  "How do you keep them out of the gardens?"  "Well, we have venison, too".  He later said if the deer come onto their property, the Amish just shoot them and eat them.  Kalifornia is so screwed up!

The local Amish "Wal-Mart" store.  Everything a self-respecting Amish or Mennonite person could want or need in the neighborhood.  I bet a 3rd of the store is shoes...all black!

Since they don't use electricity, they use propane for heat/light so here is one of their ceiling heaters/lights.  I'm kinda thinking this won't pass some kind of safety standard in most of Kalifornia but it works nicely back here.  They use natural sunlight for lighting in the rooms and use what looked to me to be DC current fans to circulate the air in the big rooms.   Most likely from solar arrays on top of the buildings.  Solar is big here and everywhere.

One of the aisles in the store.  On the left is the stainless steel goods for cooking.  Fair prices on items for the home.  The guide said the homes have 8 to 15 kids for farming so they cook a lot of food.  The guide said one of the farmers said he used Roundup on his garden to keep the weeds down (that is forbidden to use that kind of a devil's product).  He was surprised till the farmer explained, "I roundup my kids and they pick out the weeds!".

The last stop of the day was a Mennonite family style meal at a local home.  We had a bunch of us there but "Selena" has been doing this for years.  She's the short gal on the right of the picture.  Very friendly and nice.  Her grand-daughter served us.  We had Tapioca (Strawberry and very tasty and I don't like tapioca), salad, pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, mixed vegetables, pasta, and several different pies for dessert.  And there was plenty of it.  All in all, a very nice day and we enjoyed it immensely.  Most of the people here are temple missionaries and all of us are members.  The tour guides are used to us "Mormons" coming us for tours.  He was pretty good and knew his stuff.