In the Season 5 premiere of Return to Amish, “Leaving Everything Behind,” while Mary tries to figure out if she’s going to rejoin the Amish church or not, Jeremiah and Carmela develop a new partnership with Ada, an Amish woman who makes and sells Amish Donuts at fairs. Jeremiah and Carmela plan to hit the road with the donuts and sell them at fairs across the country but they can’t do it alone. They need to hire salespeople. Ada demands that they hire Amish people which makes Jeremiah balk at first. “Jeremiah might look really tough, but I have the money,” says Ada. After being shunned by the Old Order Amish community (she got a job; women aren’t supposed to), Ada started her own business, a cleaning service, which makes “a lot of money.” She says she’s called the Amish Firecracker because “I’m little louder than the typical Amish woman.”
Jeremiah meets Ada’s demand by hiring three Mennonites who are willing to leave their communities and work in the English world with Jeremiah as their guide, god help them. The three Mennonites are Dawn, who, on the same day, lost her brother in a car accident and her husband who confessed to cheating on her. The other two, Lowell and Shelly, are African-Americans who were adopted by white Mennonite families. Lowell, who is already breaking lots of Mennonite rules (he’s dating an Amish girl and has lost his virginity), wants to find out where he really comes from, as does Shelly who was adopted when her biological mother was in prison.
And those are just the new storylines. It’s going to be an explosive and eye-opening season. New episodes of Return to Amish airs Sundays at 10 pm on TLC.
