Over in the orchard, Evan was working with Jonah, Solomon, and Dat, all of them applying liquid soil drench to keep the trees healthy as well as to resist disease. Makes for very tasty fruit, Ellie thought.

She wondered when—and if—Evan might tell her about Dat’s talk with him, assuming that had taken place. Since the new year, Evan had been working closely with their father, and it crossed her mind that her twin might already be in training to manage the orchard. Dat was known to plan way ahead, a valuable trait in an orchardist. They had to look ten to twenty years into the future for production and plantings. But Evan would have to change his ways.

Ellie sometimes wondered what her life would look like years from now . . . and what kind of work her future husband would do. Likely a farmer. He wouldn’t be an orchardist, not if he’s from this church district. Theirs was the only orchard in Bird-in-Hand.

Ellie walked back to the house, giving thanks to the Lord, grateful for her father’s devotion to God and family . . . and his meticulous tending to the orchard.

Still fretting over his talk with Evan two nights ago, Lyle took time after evening chores to select several verses and place bookmarks in his Bible so he could easily find them. He was hoping that reading them during family devotions might underscore what he’d told Evan. His own father had read these verses to him as he was growing up.

At the appointed time, the family gathered in the front room—except for Daed, who’d returned to his Dawdi Haus after he mentioned feeling weary.

How full this room had always been before the older boys and Lydia married! It struck Lyle that his two youngest were no longer children. And so far, three out of five had followed the Lord in holy baptism and were walking in the Old Ways. And now Ellie will be joining church soon, he thought, at the same time wishing Evan had joined her in taking baptismal classes.

He opened the Good Book.

“Let us remember the importance of this nightly devotional time together as a family,” he began, looking at Ellie and then Evan, noticing his son seemed distracted. Is he pondering what we discussed? Or eager to get on with his evening?

“Instead of reading a chapter, I’ve chosen three verses for each of us to think ’bout,” he added, wondering if Evan might feel singled out. Still, he felt led to do things this way. “The first is Second Corinthians, chapter six, verse seventeen. ‘Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.’”

Lyle glanced up at Ellie, who was paying close attention, and now Evan was sitting more erect, too, his eyes on him as well. Is he finally taking this to heart?