I was driving through West Linn Oregon the other day coming home from work, and I noticed a missionary coming out of a local church food bank carry a bag or two of groceries. An elderly woman was walking with him. As they neared her car, his companion came walking out.

I thought they might be helping an investigator or something, but the one carrying the food put it in the woman's car trunk and went back into the food bank with his comp.

So it appears that they are volunteering at this food bank as part of their mission. Has anyone seen this before?

If they are, how ridiculous does that make the church formerly known as mormon look? Sending their missionaries to volunteer at another churches food bank with hopes of finding converts. If they really cared about feeding the poor, they would have their own food banks serving the community, staffed by missionaries or church volunteers.

I just had a thought....I bet if I started a community food bank in the name of the church formerly known as mormon.....the church would shut it down.

When I was a missionary back in the late 1990s/early 2000s, we did volunteer service with different organizations--generally for 2-4 hours once a week.

I worked at a recreation facility for kids, building a ship for scouts, cleaning the zoo, doing walks with severely disabled people, and played games with seniors at an assisted living home. We sometimes found the opportunities through other churches (egad!). Those are things from my missionary experience that I'm actually proud of--and it was a lot more interesting than knocking on doors.

Our mission president wanted to get his numbers up and discontinued our service activity. That made me mad. People in the country generally disliked us and didn't listen to our door approach (ok can't blame them for that). I registered these objections to the ZL. If I had more guts I would have threatened to quit. That would have been a nice little scandal, since I was a branch president. Alas, I bowed my head and said yes...ugh.

That experience left a bad taste in my mouth and was definitely part of my shelf stack when I returned.

Yes. I've seen this at a mission/shelter here in Western Canada. They came to help serve breakfast to homeless folks. Their job was to dish up porridge. They weren't that friendly. No preaching allowed. They didn't help clean up either. Better use of their time though.

ETA: Oh yeah. It was run by the Lutheran Church.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2018 07:17PM by Nightingale.

I've heard enough about how some active members have to do to get assistance directly from the church depending on their local leadership. I fear what they'd expect from non-members if they had food banks open to the public. Something like a way more extreme version of "you must sit through this service before we feed you heathen poor."

My local food bank is secular but a lot of the volunteers are from local churches. We must have some kind-minded Mormon around because on the couple of times I've needed their help, I got Mormon peanut butter. Imagine, they donated something useful to something besides the corporation!

It's nice to know that the LDS church presumably gave something with no strongs attached.

When I saw this I had to cringe remembering something that we learned about here a couple of years ago. Seems they were using the food bank as a way to harvest names/info on people in crisis that they thought would be easy marks to dunk. It was VERY disgusting the way the people were talked about. I am sure the original blog if it still even exists, is scrubbed all shiny and clean by now but there are some quotes still here on the board.

Here is what I could find with a quick look, there may be more.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1816624,1816624#msg-1816624

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1817420,1817420#msg-1817420

If you are involved with any kind of food bank or assistance organization and LDSInc is involved I would mention this to those in charge to make sure it doesn't happen there.

You're dead on. When Katrina hit New Orleans, a few local groups organized a supply drive. Our local grocery chain in Utah, set up a system where you could buy an extra can of food, toiletries, blankets, etc. Or donate cash for the victims.They organized truckers to drive the supplies from Utah to New Orleans and Houston. We had pallets of supplies sitting in the parking lots that needed loading in the trailers. A few mormon wards, all wearing bright yellow, logo MORMON t- shirts showed up, with news crews filming, and loaded the stuff. They didn't provide the stuff, organize the donations, drive the trucks or anything else.They spent a few hours loading other's donations in the trailers. They showed up in a marketing opportunity and took credit for "saving Katrina victims". Disgusting opportunists.

The Mormon missionaries wanted to "help out" at the place where I volunteer. I told them they were welcome to do "behind the scenes" work. They said, no, they would rather work directly with the public. I said, not! All of us who worked with the people had counseling experience, and had been trained to deal with the specific problems our organization was addressing. They ended up not helping at all.

It's just as Susan I/S says: they want only to make contact with potential converts, who were weakened and vulnerable.

We were glad they didn't come back. I felt that it would have been like offering up lambs to the wolves. We have a lot of children there.

Just a couple of observations about missionary community service.

It depends on the mission president (and top leaders) concerning the number of hours and days that mishies work.

When I first started my mission in the 1990s, the church was trying to appear to be community oriented. We had to complete 8-10 hours a week (split over two days, but not consecutive.) It was a big deal that we had to have an official form that "proved" that we actually performed community service. As I served, the hours began to drop to 6 and finally four.

The type of work is usually initiated by the original set of missionaries that opened the area. It is common for a missionary to not care for the place, organization or the type of work that missionaries are scheduled to work. So switching to another type of service is common. I had a sweet "gig" as a volunteer for patient dismissal at the local hospital. They provided everything (A t-shirt, a lunch once a week and a bi-annual banquet for volunteers.) When another companion came along, he hated serving at the hospital and was rude to people. This asshole got his way and got the hospital supervisor of volunteers to ask us to not return. Instead, I ended up trying to teach English to language learners at the local library. While he read sports magazines, I was stuck running a program that I was unprepared for.

If funds are running short towards the end of the month, can missionaries go to any of these non-LDS food banks to supplement their food needs?

tumwater Wrote:
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> If funds are running short towards the end of the
> month, can missionaries go to any of these non-LDS
> food banks to supplement their food needs?

...or maybe get a part-time job? That'd be cool, two gussied-up elders working at McDonald's!

I am one of the managers of a free food bank. The missionaries come to the food bank weekly. They stock the shelves, help people to their cars, sweep & mop the floor, serve food, and wash dishes. About a year ago missionaries stopped in and asked if they could help in anyway. They do take groceries when they leave but are frugal about it.
If they came in just to get food that would be ok. Nobody would blink an eye.
Have never had any complaints about them trying to talk up any of the people there for groceries or a meal. However, some of the regulars who come to the food bank try to convert the missionaries.

Makes me wonder how detailed MP reports to SL are (and who reads them); any numbers besides baptisms count/matter?

Do you think SLC cares about reactivation stats?

They used to. I think they were trying out different ideas to see if they could reduce the RM falling away rate.

On my mission, we worked in another church feeding the homeless.

My view of Jesus was always the giving hippy, so I remember being upset thinking about why the richer Mormon church wouldn't do anything like this. Looking back, it was the best part of my mission. I really loved my time there, and the people working in the kitchen every day were truly good people (behavior I had never seen in the ladder-climbing Mormons).

Missionaries are told what to do
Minister THIS, minister THAT

It's not a campaign to convert but more PR/ 'advertising'/ missionary training (fool two years)/ religious cross-cultural-classes to con carma credit.

LDS missionaries these days are, knowingly or unknowingly, walking billboards. They are on a mission from God, only they don't know it... and neither does God, and neither ever will. What a thrill!

Mormonism isn't organized
So it piggybacks on "organized" Christlike normality and good deeds, just because. WwJd? Mormonism would do the opposite if it even thought of the reality of any kind of practical Christianity.

If it would just PRACTICE WHAT IT PREACHES, it would be alright. But that is IMPOSSIBLE. It preaches TOO HIGH and thinks and aims and acts TOO LOW.

M@t