The Hometown Treasure December 2012 | Page 16

Season of Giving As the holidays draw near and the sun pulls back, the good people of LaGrange County don their winter gear and hit the shopping centers in preparation for a flurry of holiday festivities. After all, there are meals to prepare, homes to decorate and presents to buy ARC workers Lydia Brubaker and Michelle Hollowell assist Diann Rose at the check out. Photography by Jerry Hostetler pg 14 · The Hometown Treasure · December ‘12 (and let’s not forget about the upcoming Black Friday madness). Many will travel an hour or more away from their homes to shop, but residents of Shipshewana may not have to travel so far. This summer saw the grand opening of a new shop on S. Van Buren Street called the ARC Thrift Store. The LaGrange County ARC opened an By Sarah Rogers all-donations-based thrift store right in downtown Shipshewana to help support their many community assistance programs. “We wanted to have a means of supporting ourselves without the help of government funding and be able to give back to the community at the same time,” said Deb Seman, CEO of the ARC in LaGrange. Everything