Serving and Saving in the Latter Day

Erika Dyson

March 1, 2004

"It's a leper bandage." The cheerful mother of six held the crocheted cotton strip out to me for inspection. "The women in our church make them to send to, where is it? India?" Other women around the picnic table nodded, their fingers expertly working yarn into rows of even stitches.

"Crocheted bandages are better than gauze for lepers in poor countries," offered one young woman, as she disentangled her toddler from a yarn bag. "You can scrub them clean on a rock and reuse them. And you can't do that with gauze."

This sensible observation earned another round of nods from the other women and provoked a bewildered smile from me. Until this moment two years ago, sitting under the pines at the Brigham Young Memorial Family Campground in Blanding, Utah, I assumed leprosy only afflicted characters in bible stories and Monty Python movies. It was hardly a topic that came up in regular conversation with my friends, nor is it one I knew enough about to offer any practical advice for its treatment.

Happily for people who suffer from leprosy, or Hansen's disease as it is now called, the women with whom I sat were far better informed than I. They all are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which expends considerable resources to keep its members up on the needs of the poor and afflicted in the world, and to organizing projects that address those needs. Members, known as Mormons, participate in humanitarian projects small and large, such as making school kits for Miami children or donating tons of medicine and food to earthquake-ravaged Iran last December.

"Where we see a person in need, it doesn't matter if they're in our faith or not,' explained Carolyn Ford, director of the Queens branch of the Relief Society, the Church's women's organization, in a recent phone interview. "We reach out and are there for them. I mean, that is what the Savior would have done. That is the basis of our church."

Although its leaders actively discourage media speculation about the Church's net worth or operating costs, they do publicize figures for what they donate to others on their Web site, www.lds.org. In 2002, the Church gave 93 million dollars in goods and cash for disaster relief, community development programs and humanitarian aid projects world-wide. This total included, presumably, the cost of producing hand-made items such as leper bandages.

"The motive behind this is basic. We are all God's children," explained David Olsen, a recent transplant to the New York area and a life-long member of the Church. "We do all we can to be self-sufficient so if there is a disaster, from job-loss to a hurricane, for example, we can take care of our families and, ideally, the people around us."

The concern with preparedness evident in Olsen's statement resounds at every level of Church organization, and opens Mormons to the charge of being survivalists of the deepest stripe. Doctrine, speeches by Church leaders, and Church publications all encourage Mormons both to become self-sufficient and to serve others. And, since its founding, the Church has put great effort into building and maintaining an extensive network of industries in order to serve these objectives of readiness and philanthropy.

Today, the Church owns and operates a multi-million dollar system of farms, manufacturing plants, canneries, cattle-ranches, storehouses and dairies. According to a February St. Petersburg Times article on LDS business ventures in Florida by Janet Zink, this includes the largest cattle-ranch in the United States, located just outside Orlando. Collectively, these facilities are known as Deseret Industries, named after the industrious honeybees the Mormon founders admired.

These large-scale industries enable the Church to address large-scale disasters throughout the world. For example, in 1999, the Deseret Dairy, a powdered food products plant in Salt Lake City, produced 240 tons of Atmit, a nutritional porridge, to send to Ethiopia during their recent famine. Closer to home, when a huge tornado ripped through Oklahoma City two years ago, the Church was able to mobilize trucks of equipment, food, and medicine the same day, not to mention the hundreds of volunteers who got themselves to the disaster area to help out.

To address life's smaller disasters, each Mormon stake, the equivalent of a Catholic diocese, maintains at least one Bishop's Storehouse, a regional facility run by volunteers and funded by monthly "fast and testimony" offerings, the cost of two meals that members skip once a month in order to donate the proceeds to the Church. The storehouses hold preserved food, household and medical supplies, and, sometimes, clothing. Mormons who fall on hard times can apply to their ward leaders for food or other assistance, and, in exchange, are expected to work some at the storehouses doing whatever is required.
And then there is family food storage:

"We are admonished when times are good and things are going all right to put aside food storage so if you should have an illness or somebody is laid off you have things to carry your family through, if possible. At least one year's worth of food storage," explained Ford. "And ... at least a few months of worth of income tucked away so you could survive and not need to use church resources."

All of these efforts fall under the guidance of Welfare Services, an umbrella organization located in Salt Lake City which coordinates all Church humanitarian and welfare programs. Welfare Services relies on volunteers to run many of its programs, but it also employs a few thousand members full-time across the country. In 2002, individual Mormons donated 516,318 days of labor and 2960 Mormon missionaries volunteered full time. Other missionaries serve in humanitarian posts in foreign countries.

All of this preparedness begs the question, what are Mormons preparing for? The characterization of Mormons as survivalists is not without some merit. According to Church historians and senior leaders, Mormons are readying themselves for the Apocalypse, as foretold in the Christian Bible and expanded upon in Mormon scripture.

Mormon doctrine teaches that in the 1830's Joseph Smith, Jr., the church's first prophet and founder, received golden plates from the Angel Moroni, which foretold the immanent second coming of Christ on the North American continent. Smith claimed that this announcement heralded the restoration of the "pure" Christian Church to the world, undistorted by sectarian embellishments. He urged his followers to ready themselves for the period of chaos and "tribulation" preceding Christ's coming.

Mormons today, such as Jason Howell, a lay leader in the Queens stake, interpret this to mean that they should be prepared to help their neighbors as well.

"We don't believe that it is only Mormons who will be saved in the end," he assured me.

In ordinary conversation, however, millennial fears more frequently yield to other anxieties when talking to Mormons about stockpiling supplies.

"I grew up with the Cold War and the Russians and the silos in Kansas, and all of that. ... and then I was here for 9-11 and, even with the blackout, it does make you think," Ford maintained. "As a mother of a large family I just can't imagine the terror you would feel if you knew that you only had less than a week's worth of food, if you put it together and had to live on it, to feed your family."

But apocalyptic expectations do matter, according to their current prophet and president of the Church, Gordon B. Hinkley, who recently praised Mormons for their dedication to the church in an interview published on lds.org.

"Much is expected of them as Latter-day Saints. They do not resent it," he claimed. "They are put to work. They are given responsibility. They are made to feel a part of the great onward movement of this, the work of God."

(Updated April 26, 2004)