An Amish Christmas Promise. Jo Brown Ann

       Chapter One

       Evergreen Corners, Vermont

      The bus slowed with a rumble of its diesel engine.

      Michael Miller opened his eyes. A crick in his neck warned him that he’d fallen asleep in a weird position. The last time he’d ridden a bus was when he caught one to the train station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Then he’d traveled with his twin brother and Gabriel’s bopplin to their new farm in Harmony Creek Hollow in northern New York.

      Now he was on a bus on a late October day because he needed time away, time with peace and quiet, to figure out the answer to one vital question: Should he remain in their Amish community, or was the future he wanted beyond a plain life?

      Today Michael was in Vermont, on his way to Evergreen Corners. The small village was at the epicenter of powerful flash floods that had accompanied Hurricane Kevin when the massive storm stalled over the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains last week.

      The bus hit another pothole in the dirt on what once had been a paved road. He was shocked to discover the other lane had been washed away. The road, a major north–south conduit in the state, was barely wider than the bus’s wheels. He didn’t see any cars anywhere, just a couple of trucks with what looked like a town seal on their doors. They were parked near a building where all the windows and doors were missing.

      His stomach tightened. Had those vehicles been commandeered as ambulances? Were the people working there looking for victims?

      The stories coming out of Vermont had warned that the situation was dismal. Whole sections of towns like Evergreen Corners had been washed away by torrents surging along what had been babbling brooks. People left with no place to live, all their possessions gone or covered with thick mud. Trees torn from the banks. Rocks—both giant boulders and tons of gravel—swept beneath bridges and damming the streams, forcing the water even higher.

      Michael could see the road—or what there was left of it—followed a twisting stream between two steep mountains. The job of rebuilding was going to be bigger than he’d imagined when he’d stepped forward to offer his skills as a carpenter.

      How much could he and the other fifteen volunteers on the bus do in the next three months? Where did they begin?

      And what had made him think he’d find a chance to think about the future here?

      God, I trust You know where I should be. Help me see.

      The bus jerked to a stop, and the driver opened the door. “Here we are!”

      A pungent odor oozed into the bus. It was a disgusting mix of mud and gasoline and the fuel oil that had been washed out of household storage tanks. Michael gasped, choking on the reek.

      When a mask was held out to him, he took it from his friend, Benjamin Kuhns, who was sitting beside him, but didn’t put it on. Like Michael, Benjamin had volunteered when a representative of Amish Helping Hands had come two days ago to Harmony Creek Hollow. Amish Helping Hands worked with other plain organizations to help after natural disasters. Benjamin announcing that he wanted to come, too, had been a surprise, because he’d been focused for the past year on working with his older brother, Menno, in getting their sawmill running. Business had been growing well, and Michael wondered if Benjamin was seeking something to help him grasp onto his future, too.

      “Watch where you step,” shouted the bus driver before he went out.

      Michael stood and grabbed his small bag off the shelf over his head, stuffing the mask into a pocket. He noticed a few people on the bus had donned theirs.

      His larger bag, where he’d packed the tools he expected he’d need, was stored under the bus. Nobody spoke as