News for Mormons

From The Charlotte Observer:

Clarence Brown (foreground) leads prayer before lunch for volunteers at the Bishops’ Storehouse in Greensboro. JOHN D. SIMMONS – jsimmons@charlotteobserver.com

GREENSBORO The sign out front – “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” – is the first clue that the brown brick building is a little different than the other warehouses that dot Triad Industrial Park.

Inside, pictures of Jesus helping have-nots hang above shelves packed with boxes of cereal, lasagna, turkey and Huggies. Cans of beef stew and tomato sauce bear stamps that say: made by Mormons in Utah. The workers, busy bagging, boxing and loading onto trucks everything from chicken to eggs, are volunteers and address each other as “brother” and “sister.”

From this Bishops’ Storehouse, food and other necessities are transported across North Carolina to aid fellow Mormons and occasionally others.

“We all need help sometimes in our lives – especially now,” says Greensboro accountant Keith Hiatt, a lifelong Mormon who assists with storehouse operations. “We want to give.”

Houses of worship of all stripes are pitching in as their flocks try to survive this severe economic squeeze. Few were as ready and are as practiced as the fast-growing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons. The Church’s first storehouse opened in the 1840s in the Ohio home of Bishop Newell Whitney. During the Great Depression, the Salt Lake City-based church launched its Welfare Services system, with regional pantries, as well as church-owned farmland to grow most of the food and church-owned trucks to deliver it.

Today, there are 140 bishops’ storehouses. Besides Greensboro, sites include Columbia, Knoxville, Tenn., and Richmond, Va.

Mormons, who number 71,737 in North Carolina and 36,141 in South Carolina, trace their tradition of giving to their founder, Joseph Smith. They say he was instructed by God in 1831 to keep goods “in my storehouse to administer to the poor and needy.”

These days, those on the receiving end are increasingly the suddenly unemployed.

Last year, the storehouse got 5,482 orders – each number representing a family. At the pace orders are coming in this year, “we’re going to go well over 7,000,” says storehouse manager Bob Hahn. “That’s a real sign of the times.”

Fast Offerings

It’s also a testament to how the downturn is hurting even members of a church that prizes self-reliance as one of its core principles.

Mormon families are encouraged to save as much money as they can and store large amounts of food at home – a three-month supply of what they normally eat and a year’s worth of long-term stocks such as wheat, rice and nuts. Many Mormons also can their own food, and the Greensboro storehouse includes a cannery that stays busy.

Bishops’ storehouses are funded by members of the church, who are asked to fast for two meals, usually on the first Sunday of the month. They then send the money they would have spent on those meals – their “Fast Offering” – to the church.

And the name Bishops’ Storehouse?

In the Mormon tradition, it’s the bishop – an unpaid layman appointed to head a “ward” (congregation) – who assesses each request for assistance and, if it’s granted, sends an order to the storehouse.

“Storehouse” can also be a figurative term, referring to the members of his flock who are specialists willing to offer their services for free. The bishop could assign an accountant to a family with budget problems or dispatch a mechanic to help somebody with little money whose car breaks down.

In assessing who needs help, the bishop’s job is to “sustain life, not lifestyle,” says Bishop Randy Rummage, who heads the Pineville, 1st Ward, a 500-member congregation. “If they are still wanting to keep their season tickets to the Bobcats and still want to stay in the country club, then we’re going to have to talk and reach an agreement that those are not necessities.”

Those who do get help are asked to perform some tasks in return – say, clean the church every weekend.

“The church doesn’t need the work,” says Tom Cheney, president of Charlotte’s South “Stake,” a group of nine congregations. “But the people do. They need to feel they have worth.”

From bad to worse

For years, life was good for a Fort Mill, S.C., couple we’ll call Wayne and Marie (they asked the Observer not to use their real names). Mormon converts and transplants from the Midwest, they both had good jobs and had even managed to store up enough canned goods in their home to last a year.

But in 2008, Marie lost her job as a flight attendant when ATA Airlines shut down. And before long, the nosedive in the economy choked off Wayne’s business selling credit card processing machines.

Then the couple got the worst news: She was diagnosed with breast cancer.

A counselor to Bishop Rummage approached Wayne and Marie to offer some help. With hospital and other bills mounting and little revenue coming in, they eventually said yes.

“We held out until we had to turn to the church for help,” says Wayne, 55. “We were at a point where it was very difficult …to pay the bills.”

Inside and outside the faith

Rummage talked to the couple. He then had the church help pay their COBRA health insurance premiums and supply them – from the storehouse in Greensboro – such perishables as milk, bread, fruit, vegetables, cheese and meat.

“We had been cutting into our own (canned goods),” Marie, 51, says, “but the church has been generous in providing the necessities.” The food is delivered every other Wednesday.

Rummage says he gets two to three aid requests a month. After investigation and prayer, he sometimes says yes, sometimes no, and sometimes hooks people up with a government program.

Occasionally, he says, the call for help will come from a non-Mormon who walks in off the street. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a history of helping people outside the faith, particularly victims of natural disasters. One example in recent years: The church sent waves of tractor-trailers filled with food and emergency supplies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

‘It’s in my heart’

Deciding to help Wayne and Marie, who are members of his congregation and regular attendees at church, was not difficult, says Rummage.

“We rely heavily on the influence of the Spirit and on knowing our sheep,” he says. “This was an easy call, with this family. These are obedient children of a loving heavenly father. The hard calls involve those we worry about spiritually. The only time I see them is when they come for help.”

Besides the groceries and financial aid from the church, Wayne and Marie have gotten help from the congregation in the form of rides to the doctor, casseroles, tips on possible jobs, and classes on networking and resume-writing.

“I want to get to the point where I can return the favors,” says Marie. “Not because of obligation, but because it’s in my heart. The sisters and brothers have become like literal sisters and brothers.”

From The Tooele Transcript Bulletin:

Jason Heward, manager of the Erda Utah Crops project, climbs a grainery where wheat is stored in Erda on Friday. The Erda project is part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ extensive welfare system.  Photography / Maegan Burr

Times are tough. High food prices have taken a toll on many families’ finances. But at least one farm and one ranch in Tooele County are doing their part to provide food to those who need it.

The ranch, in Vernon, and farm, in Erda, are part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ welfare system, which includes canneries, farms, and factories. The system is designed to care for the needy while enabling them to become self-reliant.

According to church officials, because of the downturn in the economy, demand on the church’s welfare system has significantly increased. Both operations in Tooele County have increased their yield and production levels to keep up with the demand.

Brent Chugg, manager of production for the LDS Church Welfare Services, said the Vernon ranch raises beef while the Erda farm grows corn for livestock and wheat for storage.

The ranch, called Vernon Utah Livestock, which began in the 1950s, currently consists of about 700 head of mother cows, according to Scott Livingston, manager of the operation. The operation was a dairy for a couple of years, but went back to being a cow-calf operation.

“The way it works is the calves don’t leave the church system,” he said. “We ship the calves to a church feed lot, then to church meat-packing plant, then to the poor. Everything we do is with volunteers.”

The LDS Church Welfare Services is a vast network stretching across the globe. According to data from the church, that network includes 138 storehouses, 55 production projects, 24 processing facilities, and 37 storage and distribution facilities. In 2007, the system produced 88 million pounds of wheat and dry beans; 34 million pounds of row crops (vegetables); 27,000 tons of animal feed; 5 million pounds of fruit; 4,100 head of cattle; 1.3 million pounds of turkey; and 81 million pounds of raw milk.

The entire network runs on the donated labor of volunteers. The system is also supported by fast offerings, which are donations from Church members who fast two meals a month and donate the money they would’ve spent on those meals.

When Livingston needs help at the ranch, he calls a woman in Tooele whose calling in the Tooele South Stake is to find volunteers. He said volunteers don’t have to be members of the church and don’t necessarily have to have expertise in ranching operations.

For example, last Friday he needed people to help check cows to see if they were pregnant. Sixteen volunteers came out, including from the Tooele Valley area and other parts of the state.

The all-volunteer operation helps keep operating costs, and thus prices, down, according to Livingston.

Only he and an assistant manager are paid.

Livingston said production on the ranch within the past year has increased dramatically.

“This year it jumped very large numbers just because the need is out there right now,” he said. “They’re wanting more and more now just wanting to fill the gaps.”

The LDS Church has two other welfare ranches in the country like the one in Vernon — one in Nephi and another in Ely, Nev.

The feed lot where the cattle are sent is located in Elberta, in Utah County. It is here where the calves are fattened until they reach about 1,800 pounds. Then they go to a church meat-packing plant in Spanish Fork. From there, the meat goes to Welfare Square — a facility in Salt Lake City that includes a milk-processing plant, cannery, a bishops’ storehouse, thrift store, employment center and silos where wheat and other grains are stored.

Products can then be transported on trucks to wherever they are needed, including other bishop’s storehouses. There are 138 bishops’ storehouses around the world.

According to Cody Craynor, spokesman for the LDS Church, the services provided at the bishops’ storehouses are made available by bishop referral, which can include members as well as non-members.

Various products can be shipped all over the world for humanitarian efforts, including disaster relief. From 1985 to 2007, the church gave aid in 185 major disaster assistance efforts, according to church records.

The Erda Utah Crops project, run by manager Jason Heward, operates in much the same way as the Vernon ranch.

There are a total of more than 1,000 acres on three parcels of land in Erda where corn and wheat are planted — roughly a 50-50 split. The parcels are on Sheep Lane, Erda Way and off SR-36. Heward said the Erda project has been operational since the 1950s. At one time, there was also a dairy. The crops grown used to be hay and wheat, but about three years ago the hay crop was switched to corn.

The corn goes to Elberta for the feed lot and dairy there. The wheat, which is stored in granaries, can be distributed to where there is need.

Heward said yields in recent years have gone up as demand has gone up.

With just three paid employees — Heward, an assistant manager and an office manager — the work of volunteers is imperative to the success of the operation.

The Stansbury Park Utah South Stake has a stake coordinator and ward coordinator who Heward can contact when he needs volunteers. In addition, Heward said there is no restriction on who can help, including non-members. Volunteers run tractors, mow stubble, weed whack, fix fence, repair things, paint, and conduct various maintenance on the farm.

He said volunteers put in between 3,000 to 5,000 hours each year at the farm. The help of volunteers is especially needed at harvest time.

Other church farms in Utah are in Fielding, Corrine, Layton, West Point, Nephi, Saratoga and Riverton.

Heward said the farms are crucial during tough times.

“It’s nice to know people can get help when they need it,” he said. “That’s why I like this job.”

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