30 Quebec Wards and Branches Help with Cleanup

Mormon congregations are formed on a geographical basis and are called “wards.”  Smaller groups of Latter-day Saints are called “branches.”  Both types of congregations are found in Quebec, and thirty of them joined together  through the Mormon Helping Hands program to participate in the 17th annual Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.

More than 400 Helping Hands volunteers showed up to help and worked at two cleanup sites in the Montreal area. The projects were at Montreal’s Angrignon Park and along the St. Lawrence River in Longueuil. This was the first ever Quebec-wide Mormon Helping Hands Service Day.

Over the seventeen years it has been held, the Quebec shoreline cleanup project has grown to be one of the largest projects of its kind in the world.   Nearly 1 million kilograms of shoreline litter has been removed from Canadian Shorelines since 1997.   This year’s cleanup covered over 4 miles of shoreline and gathered over 4,000 pounds of trash. 

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The Children with Cancer Christmas Foundation (CCCF),

The Children with Cancer Christmas Foundation (CCCF) was founded fourteen years ago by Mac Boyter.   Boyter is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  He attended a priesthood meeting wherein late prophet Gordon B. Hinckley spoke.  The prophet counseled the brethren, reminding them of their duty to the community, that they should seek to bless the lives of others, regardless of religious affiliation.

Boyter, a cancer survivor, wanted to do something for Utah Valley, Utah, children who were then suffering with cancer.  They numbered around 80.  He dicussed this desire with some close friends.  They had no clear idea of what they might be able to achieve, and they had virtually no funding, but they did what they could and have been doing so for fourteen years. 

CCCF has provided help over the years for around 1,000 families.   The organization stages an annual Christmas party with gifts, food, Santa, Cosmo the Cougar mascot and the BYU basketball team.   The party spans two days.  The first evening, the parents have dinner and pick up gifts for their children at the Cougar Room on BYU’s campus.  On the second evening, whole families gather to have dinner, socialize, do fun activities, pass out more gifts, rub shoulders with the BYU basketball team and be entertained and meet Santa Claus.

Families who attend have children newly diagnosed with cancer, cancer in remission or have lost children to the disease.  

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LDS Church Donates to Local Homeless Shelter

The South Provo homeless shelter is only about 30 miles from the Salt Lake City headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Brent Crane, executive director of the Food and Care Coalition received an e-mail from Church Humanitarian Services and LDS Charities in November, 2010, announcing a donation of $341,000.  The donation would arrive immediately to go toward its transitional housing center in south Provo.  The goal is to get more people off the streets this winter.

The homeless shelter still has not reached its goal of $700,000 in donations, but the offering from the Church is a big leap.  Crane must prove that he has enough money to operate for one year before the board of directors will allow the upper floor to be opened to homeless singles and couples.  The LDS Charities donation will be enough to finish off the living quarters that will house 26 homeless men and 12 homeless women.

The funds will go for construction and finishing materials and furnishings.  The coalition leadership had contacted the LDS Charities several months ago.  Funds come from the volutary donations of members of the Church.

Winnipeg Canada Mormons Feed the Hungry

Hundreds of volunteers from the six Mormon congregations in Winnipeg, Canada,  picked up canned food and non-perishable items from residents of a dozen Winnipeg neighbourhoods.  The food will go to Winnipeg Harvest to feed the hungry.

This July, 2010, food drive is the fifth one supported by the city’s Mormons. The goal is to add 13,500 kilograms to the food bank’s supplies.  The food bank distributes food to more than 5,000 families weekly.  Flyers were distributed to 60,000 households in preparation for the drive.  Residents left food on their doorsteps to be picked up by the volunteers.

Latter-day Saints are prepared to help without making an extra trip to the grocery store.  For many years they have been urged by church leaders to lay up a store of food, clothing and fuel.  The method is to gradually stock up on the food the family eats on a regular basis until there is a three-months supply, then rotate through the pantry, so the supply is refreshed.  Emergency water rations can be stored in cleansed plastic containers that used to carry other products, or in containers purchased specifically to store water.  After the three months’ supply is in place, then the Chuch instructs its members to store a year’s supply of items that have a very long shelf life, so they don’t have to be rotated.  These items include wheat, dry beans, rice, sugar, salt, and honey.

Latter-day Saints also prepare 72-hour kits for emergency evacuations.  For more on emergency preparedness and food storage, go to MormonPreparedness.com.

LDS Help Presbyterians Build Park

An ecumenical service project is under way in American Fork, Utah.  The project was undertaken by the Community Presbyterian Church for the benefit of children with autistic disorders.  The church had run a pre-school and day center for three decades, but closed the program when other pre-schools sprung up in the growing community.  However, in 2008, the church was approached by the North County Summer Autistic Program, which was looking for a new home.  The group is an 11-year-old cooperative of parents with children who have autism spectrum disorders. They operate a school and recreation program during the summer months.

The playground was deteriorating and had not been designed for children with autism spectrum disorders.  The Presbyterians began raising money for the project but also needed help with physical labor.  Dex Andrews, mission leader for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Highland First Ward, approached the Presbyterians to offer assistance.  Mormon volunteers brought shovels, a dump truck and an earth mover and trailers to help with the work, accomplishing in a day what would have taken a year without their help.  They removed bushes and dead trees,  trimmed trees, and removed asphalt and old fencing from the area. 

The project took place on June 5, 2010, with 20 adults and 17 older youth from the Highland ward joining about 20 Presbyterians to clean up the playground.

LDS Members Rally in Central America

Thousands of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church) have been affected by a pair of disasters in Central America  which killed hundreds, destroyed homes by the thousands and prompted a ongoing Church humanitarian response.

Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano erupted May 27, spewing lava and rocks and blanketing sections of Guatemala City — located 19 miles to the north — in ash and debris. The eruption forced the evacuation of hundreds of families living near Pacaya, including several member families. The international airport was closed because volcanic ash and debris.

Two days later, a devastating tropical storm, Agatha, made landfall at the Guatemalan border with Mexico.  As it moved south, the storm wreaked havoc not only in Guatemala, but also in Honduras and El Salvador.  The storm dumped rain, caused flooding and landslides, and even created sinkholes.  About 129,000 people were displaced.

No Church meetinghouses were harmed by the disasters and many building are being utilized to shelter LDS families who have been displaced.  Many LDS members were evacuated before the storm hit. 

“The Church provided emergency food, water, clothing and tools to victims and local priesthood leaders. The Central America Area was also working with civil authorities in the three affected Central American nations to purchase and distribute medicine, building supplies and other relief provisions.”

The Church will continue to assess the needs of church members and their neighbors to see what ongoing aid needs to be rendered.  Help rebuilding houses and planting crops is forthcoming.

How the Mormon Church Organizes

Anyone who has received assistance from Mormon Helping Hands has watched in wonder as aid is organized.  The Mormon Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) is often the first to arrive after a disaster and the last to leave.  Many have wondered at how instantly organized LDS aid is. 

The Church does not have a corner on good people.  Yet, the Church can put 25,000 members in California knocking on doors with but a week’s notice, can organize a search party of hundreds within a matter of minutes.  The Church can organize clean-up crews from eight or ten neighboring states to travel hundreds of miles to the Gulf Coast to help people, both Mormon and those of other faiths, to clear hurricane debris and rebuild their lives.  This article will tell you why and how.

First, the Church is a top-down organization, and the organization is the same worldwide.  At the top is the Prophet/ President and his two counselors (Thomas S. Monson, Henry B. Eyring, and Dieter F. Uchtdorf).  Then is the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then the first Quorum of the Seventy and other Quorums of Seventy.  The Church also has a presiding Bishopric to oversee the lesser, or Aaronic, Priesthood.  There are regional or area representatives, then stake presidencies comprised of a stake president and his two counselors.  A stake is a group of wards, and one ward is a local congregation defined geographically.  Members attend the ward where they are located.  They do not choose a congregation because they like the pastor.  Wards are run by a bishop and his two counselors.  In each ward there is an Elders’ Quorum and a High Priests’ Quorum with “Home Teachers” assigned to every family.  The women’s organization, the Relief Society is similarly run, with officers on every level and “Visiting Teachers,” who visit each family monthly.  All positions are filled by ordinary members, and most positions are temporary “callings.”   When there is an emergency, word can be gotten to the Stake President, who will then contact the bishops of each ward.  The bishops can then notify the priesthood and Relief Society leaders who will coordinate with the stake.  Home teachers and visiting teachers can assess the needs of families and individuals, relay information from the top, and express needs from the bottom up.

An example of how quickly this can work:  

A ”student in the Stanford Ward became lost in the Santa Cruz Mountains after a ward-sponsored day-trip. As night fell, the sheriff’s department was notified and they told the Church to recruit as many people as possible to begin a search at daybreak.

[One family] ”received the call at 11:00 that night from [the] elders quorum president who, with his counselors and their counterparts in the Relief Society, methodically went down the ward list. At 6:00am the next morning, an unbelievable horde was available for deputy sheriffs to instruct and take into the wooded boonies. Within an hour the young man was found, cold but not bad off for wear.

“The key was that [the Mormons] didn’t have to move laterally. The bishop did not have to spend time calling his counterparts in neighboring wards. All it took was a phone call to the stake president, thence down the line to bishops, priesthood leaders and auxiliary presidents at ward levels. As [they] prepared to return to our homes, the deputies told [them], ‘We’ve lost people from various denominations over the years, but we have never seen a bigger turnout of volunteers in a faster time than from you Mormons.’

Another reason church members are able to respond so quickly is that the Mormon Church is a geographic church.  In other churches, where members may choose which congregation to join, pastors and priests can be in competition for each other, and congregation sizes wax and wane.  Mormons attend the ward according to the geographical boundaries assigned by the Church.  Mormons don’t shop for a congregation.  This means that members are easily located and contacted when there is an emergency.

When a pastor’s paycheck depends on how many people attend, that adds another complication.  Mormon leaders are unpaid.  They continue to work at their normal vocations while they serve in the Church.  Callings are issued according to organizational structure and according to the spirit.  Most callings are temporary, and they are not “awarded.”  There is no jockeying for positions, and members are counseled not to aspire to positions.  Most members don’t, because most postions demand more from the members than they are prepared to give — they are stretched by their callings to rely on the Lord and magnify their talents.

“[The Church's] 180-year tradition of everyone having a calling has fostered a unique Mormon work ethic — a participatory instead of an observational state of mind — that other organizations can only salivate for.

“Thus when volunteers are needed, leaders need only describe the goal and point us in the right direction. Because we are participating members instead of pew potatoes, we do not need to be persuaded that volunteerism is good.”

This article was adapted from “Vertical, Geographic, and Unpaid,” by Gary C. Lawrence.

See also “Moving the Fountain,” a story of simple service.

Mormon Helping Hands in Slovenia

Members in all three branches in Ljubljana joined with a national effort to clean up Slovenia. Wearing their yellow Helping Hands vests, members from Ljubljana joined with members in the Maribor and Celje branches to help to clean up Slovenia in a day of service on April 17, 2010. [1]

The Church offered widespread support, including the full-time missionaries and President David H. Hill of the mission.  The service included rubbish clean-up projects in several areas, including Hill Roznik, behind the city park Tivoli and the Heracles temple in the park.  In the entire country, 250,000 people participated in the clean-up project, and the government sponsored festivities for the participants.

Mormon Church Sponsors Local Addiction Program

Mormons in Charleston, South Carolina, are sponsoring an addiction program for members of the local community of any faith or persuasion.  The program is adapted by LDS Services with permission from the Alcoholics’ Anonymous 12-step program.  Anyone from the community who suffers from an addiction, be it addiction to tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling, or pornography, is welcome to attend, and family members and friends who might benefit are also invited.  Those who have eating disorders or caffiene addiction would also benefit from the program.

The program is free and ongoing.  The experts managing the program are Kitty Baughan Cole, retired marriage and family therapist, and Dr. Marylou Lewis, former chief of staff for Charleston Area Medical Center.  

Lewis is now clinical ethicist and palliative care physician for CAMC Health Systems Inc. She is also affiliated with her local Mormon “stake,” which includes several Mormon congregations.

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Support groups in other locations

"Mormon Angels" in Tennessee

When several Tennessee counties flooded in early May, 2010, “Mormon Angels” pitched in to help.

The first weekend in May, after two days of relentless rainfall, the Harpeth and Cumberland Rivers that meander throughout the city and suburbs of Nashville, overflowed their banks at record-breaking heights and caused extremely serious flooding.   The flood waters reached four counties in Tennessee, causing so much damage they were deemed federal disaster areas. Over 20,000 homes were destroyed or damaged with 21 deaths across the state.

Though 42 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lost their homes and 100 members’ homes or vehicles suffered damage, no lives were lost among the members of the Mormon Church, and no church buildings were damaged. 

“On Saturday afternoon the rain continued and rivers began creeping out of their banks. Members checked on one another and then organized into small groups working tirelessly throughout neighborhoods. They moved furniture and supplies to upstairs rooms. In one subdivision the residents began to call the members the ‘Mormon Angels’ because of their selfless service. One neighbor wrote the following to the members, ‘We can’t tell you how much we appreciate all the help from all of our angels yesterday. You lifted a load in more ways than one. Please convey our UTMOST appreciation,’ Cindy Tumblin. ” [1]

“On Sunday church meetings were cancelled and members continued helping others. Many housed those that were forced to evacuate. Over 15 inches of rain had fallen by Sunday evening. In some places the rivers had risen 20 feet and totally submerged homes and vehicles. Weather forecasters said a summer’s worth of rain fell in two days.”

The Church Disaster Relief in Atlanta sent 7 semi- truck loads of clean drinking water, food, cleaning kits, generators, diapers, fans and other items into the Metropolitan Nashville/Davidson County Office of Emergency Management distribution point, to the Second Harvest Food Bank (who served as a distributor for Metro) and to the Town of Lavergne.

One semi-truck full of food and supplies was taken to the Grace Works Ministries and the Empty Hands Fellowship in Franklin, TN. Seven churches belong to this ministry and serve the people throughout Williamson County.  Two semi-trucks full of water (about 7,400 gallons) were sent to Mount Pleasant, TN, because their water purification system was underwater and not working properly. Members of the Nashville stake gathered supplies for over 1200 hygiene kits that were donated to the Red Cross for distribution.

Hundreds of church volunteers gathered in flood-stricken neighborhoods cleaning up muddy debris.  Every LDS ward had work crews out daily. Members worked tirelessly side by side with people of other faiths. “Our members have been welcomed every where they have gone, wonderful associations and friendships have been established. “

Sixty members in Thompson Station met at a local Baptist church that suffered severe water damage.  The church had six inches of water fill the sanctuary and class rooms. Mormon volunteers swept, cut drywall, and cleaned mud grime off of furniture.

LDS bishops and branch presidents have assigned priesthood leaders to lead volunteer service activities and have contacted city leaders to coordinate the service activities with neighborhood needs.   The mayor of Franklin, Tennessee was grateful and called the church daily for help. Several times persons needing help would call the mayor and ask for the Mormons.

One young man preparing for his mission went to the mayor’s office daily to find out what families needed help. Members of the church assisted in any way possible such as feeding relief workers, clearing trees, removing floors, siding, air conditioners, duct work, dry wall, garages, etc.

Mormon missionaries participated fully in the clean up, and seemed to work beyond their capacities.  Many were amazed at the missionaries hard work and diligence.  They pulled up damaged wood floors and tore out soaked HVAC ducts full of mud and awful smells.

Recovering from the flood may take years for Nashville and its surrounding areas but members of the Church will always be organized and ready to serve. “We feel extremely fortunate that our members had so little damage to their homes and properties when so many others lost everything,” said Franklin Stake President William Grayson. “We consider it a blessing to be able to coordinate supplies and food to those who were affected, and we are grateful for the volunteers from our stake who have worked tirelessly to reach out and help through daily service opportunities in their communities.”   [1]

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