One Sunday in March I board a black Amish buggy with Nettie, her parents, and her younger sister and brother, Joanna and Jonas. Nettie's older brothers and sisters ride in a second buggy. Although the horses, Comet and Ranger, trot at a slow pace, it's hard to hear each other speak above the roar of gravel flying and wheels spinning. Another buggy pulls in front of us.

"That's my brother Harley and his family," calls out Nettie's father, Cephas, above the roar. A while later, Cephas points out his nephew Marcus and his wife, newly married last summer, walking up a crossroad in their Sunday best. Everyone on the road, it seems, flows to the same destination—the large white farmhouse of the Beachy family in Kalona, Iowa, where church will be held this morning.

Black buggies crowd the yard when we arrive. The white wooden church wagon, which transports the benches, songbooks and dishes from house to house, sits on the side lawn.

Nettie, Freda, Joanna, and I walk inside, where a group of women stand quietly in the glassed-in porch. Nettie and Fred neatly fold their black shawls and lay them on a long table along with their black bonnets.

One Sunday in March I board a black Amish buggy with Nettie, her parents, and her younger sister and brother, Joanna and Jonas. Nettie's older brothers and sisters ride in a second buggy.

Although the horses, Comet and Ranger, trot at a slow pace, it's hard to hear each other speak above the roar of gravel flying and wheels spinning. Another buggy pulls in front of us.

"That's my brother Harley and his family," calls out Nettie's father, Cephas, above the roar. A while later, Cephas points out his nephew Marcus and his wife, newly married last summer, walking up a crossroad in their Sunday best. Everyone on the road, it seems, flows to the same destination—the large white farmhouse of the Beachy family in Kalona, Iowa, where church will be held this morning.

Black buggies crowd the yard when we arrive. The white wooden church wagon, which transports the benches, songbooks, and dishes from house to house, sits on the side lawn.

Nettie, Freda, Joanna, and I walk inside, where a group of women stand quietly in the glassed-in porch. Nettie and Freda neatly fold their black shawls and lay them on a long table along with their black bonnets.

As each woman enters, Freda greets her with a handshake and a kiss. Freda tells me it's called the kiss of fraternal love, exchanged between church members of the same gender. Each woman greets me with a handshake and a kind smile, and I feel truly welcomed. There's a reverent feeling and very little conversation, but it's a warm kind of quiet.

[ . . . ]

After we seat ourselves on backless benches facing the men's section, Bishop Yoder and the ministers cross to the women's side to greet us with a handshake.

As the clock ticks closer to 9:30 a.m., a thick blanket of silence covers the room. School-age boys file in silently from the basement, and then the girls, who sit on benches right behind me. Preschool girls sit with their mothers, boys (and some girls if their mothers are sick) sit with their fathers.

I once read about the a cappella singing at Amish services, but nothing prepares me for its beauty. Somewhere between a song and a chant, voices rise and swell in unison, slowly spinning out each syllable in a sustained phrase of five or ten notes. The men's and women's voices blend into a beautiful pattern, the men sometimes holding a note to create an effect like an organ or drone.