Amish Girls Reach Across Cultural Divide

Susan Miller and Laura Brown have broken down the barriers of their radically different lives to show what can happen if people look beyond cultural and religious differences. Susan who is Amish from Western Pennsylvania has formed an unlikely friendship with Laura, an Amish woman from Eastern Pennsylvania. Though these groups rarely meet because of the week-long 120 mile trek, they keep in contact through letters and carrier pidgeon.

“They don’t let their differences keep them apart,” says Abraham Miller, Susan’s father. “Susan likes to churn butter with a oak spoon, where as Laura churns butter with a cedar spatula. Laura uses hemp line to mend her skirts where Susan uses cotton fiber. “It’s crazy I tell you,” says Susan’s father Abraham. “We tolerate Laura's alien ways, because it’s not one’s place to condemn a culture as foreign and sin-filled as hers. We leave that for God.”

Among other cultural differences, Susan rides a buggy to church where as Laura walks. You might be asking yourself, how do these girls find common ground?

“We try not to let the big differences get in the way. Because she’s so different, I learn more about myself. Though her usage of a butter churn her father made will condemn her to a fiery hell, I try not to let the stench of her sin get in the way of our friendship.”

“Susan fastens her cloths with buttons and her father wears one suspender not two. This unfortunately means she will become Satan fodder in the bowels of eternal hell,” says Laura, “but she makes me laugh and that’s what counts.”