Forest of the Plains

The 40th annual Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale was held this past weekend at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds. Relief Sales are held all over the country with proceeds going to support Mennonite Central Committee - a relief, service, and peace agency of the North American Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches. Many homemade foods and hand-made crafts (especially quilts) are donated by church members, then sold to raise a lot of money.

About 1:30am on Saturday a fire broke out, destroying or damaging 9 buildings. As a result the electricity service was disrupted and some food burned up. No problem! Generators were quickly donated by church members who had them at their homes. (I'll assume these were Amish church members...) And, since the homemade pies burned, empty pie boxes were auctioned off instead. The empty pie boxes raised more money than the pie sale usually does! Actually, proceeds from the sale this year were actually higher than last year. Did people see a crisis and want to give more, or was their another reason for the increased donations?

The Relief Sale site barely mentions the fire, but you can read about it from the Goshen News.

9/30/07 Sadly, supplies for over 100 school kits were burned in the fire.