Where is God (and the Mormon church) in a natural disaster?

 

Michael Otterson

  Head of Public Affairs, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Washington Post
On Faith Post
May 24, 2011 12:07 PM

  Years ago, in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan made an offhand comment that for some reason has stuck in my mind for 30 years.

He was visiting a cannery operated for the benefit of the needy and run mostly by volunteers. After spending some time there he reflected (as near as I can recall) that “there is nothing in the world as generous as American good works.”
Perhaps it struck me at the time because I’m a British immigrant, and I wondered if it was really true that Americans were more innately generous than Brits or Australians or Japanese or anyone else. I can’t answer that question, but I do think that the American public is capable of quite extraordinary self-sacrifice and generosity.
We have seen it over and over again in the past few years, with donations from ordinary people pouring into Haiti and Indonesia, into Japan and New Orleans. The devastation in Joplin, Missouri, from a mile-wide tornado and the wreckage and flooding across the southern states is merely the latest in this calamitous chain of events. And now that hurricane season is upon us, we may well see more.
It’s not easy to find anything good in disasters that rip lives apart or destroy them completely. But for those of us who aren’t directly affected, disasters provide unmistakable opportunities to reach out to those in need. In recent years it’s been gratifying to watch a surge of support, financial and otherwise, make these catastrophes somewhat more bearable for those that suffer them.
The admirable rescuers who give this kind of aid are from many walks of life – people moved by conscience to compassionate action. Not all are religious, of course. But churches and religious charities are often at the forefront of humanitarian relief, motivated to allay suffering by their religious empathy.
I have watched my own church in recent decades become increasingly more responsive and sophisticated in its disaster response and its ongoing support for the needy. This year, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints celebrates the 75th anniversary of its welfare program, born in the Depression years to help put people to work and restore their sense of dignity.
Today, the welfare program, which focuses on church members, and its sister programs that direct humanitarian aid mostly to people outside the faith, have become highly sophisticated operations designed to deliver aid to the right people at the right places in the shortest possible time. The church itself bears all the overhead costs, so 100 per cent of donations go to help victims.
As it has grown in size and experience, the church has been more and more active in responding to the needs that arise, until it is now able to respond to most major disasters, often in partnership with other organizations and faiths. Crisis response, in fact, has become a central element of the church’s worldwide humanitarian efforts. (There’s more on this on the Church’s Newsroom website - specifically about Haiti, Japan, Hurricane Katrina, and recently in the southern United States).
What exactly does Mormon welfare and humanitarian response look like? First and foremost, it’s preparing for hard times before they hit. Mormon families generally follow a storage plan for food and essential commodities in their own homes so they are not dependent on others. Countless families have used those stores to cushion times of financial hardship without having to look to government or other help.
In infrastructure terms, Mormon humanitarian aid is warehouses and trucks, tents and chain saws, hygiene kits and canned food, generators and sleeping bags, flashlights and bottled water. The warehouses, which we call bishops’ storehouses, dot the country. Their more normal focus is on helping church members who are suffering from temporary food and commodity needs, but in a disaster they take on a much broader role, often serving as staging areas for relief efforts. Even before a hurricane makes landfall, trucks are loaded with relief aid at these regional depots and head to the expected disaster areas, where their contents will be needed and used by victims, Mormon or not.
The human side of the equation is the scores of Mormon work crews who typically converge on a disaster area from neighboring states to clean up, remove debris, repair homes and provide comfort. They are well coordinated with other relief services. They are self-motivated and self-managed, arriving with their own self-sustaining supplies in tow. Mormons who are not normally inclined to break their Sabbath day conventions by mowing their own lawns or visiting a supermarket on the Sabbath feel no hesitation in wielding a chainsaw to clear fallen branches from a hurricane victim’s damaged roof, Sunday or not. Service is every bit as much a part of their religious identity as sitting in a pew.
We are all part of the human family and there is profound value in every soul. Jesus Christ and his disciples healed the sick and helped the needy. Helping or serving others is, the Book of Mormon teaches, also service to God. One of the past presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said it well: “God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs.”