Has The Physical Gathering Ceased

[CV75]

Some actual programs in place to help with a gamut of things people need.

Perhaps like the Addiction Recovery Program, and the number of special classes (such as Family Relations) held during the Sunday School block, and so forth.

[Calm]

Cal mentioned the government, I thought the church wanted us to become free of relying on government

You are mistaken if you think the Church does not encourage people to take advantage of government programs that are out there already. Since people in the Church are contributing to the government through taxes and such, why ignore the benefits they are paying for? Have you heard anyone say to not accept Social Security when one retires, not use Medicare? Or to avoid using public libraries or public school systems?

What the Church doesn't want to encourage is a total and continuing dependence on anyone, including government.

[Calm]

should we expect the world to recognize those among us like that?

We also don't have the kind of church structure that sets someone up like that as a focus for public attention. Church programs aren't generally known by the public by the people who are leading them, we don't have public figures out there doing fundraising or being official spokespeople. They don't publicize the people as much as the program...and sometimes they don't publicize that very much. I know of individuals who have pretty much completely devoted their lives to helping others, but they don't go about the fundraising process in the same way as most others do or they work within the established system to avoid redundant costs. A number of successful LDS entrepreneurs have set up foundations that fund charities in places where they went on missions (I've seen promotions of these charities at local business award events) as well as hearing them discussed when at dinners with these individuals. Edited July 2, 2013 by calmoriah

[Stone holm]

You are mistaken if you think the Church does not encourage people to take advantage of government programs that are out there already. Since people in the Church are contributing to the government through taxes and such, why ignore the benefits they are paying for? Have you heard anyone say to not accept Social Security when one retires, not use Medicare? Or to avoid using public libraries or public school systems?

What the Church doesn't want to encourage is a total and continuing dependence on anyone, including government.

Social Security and Medicare yes, but it has not always been the case with other benefits -- the Church used to discourage accepting welfare benefits except through the Church. There was a change in attitude during the Carter/Reagan recession when the Church realized it couldn't deal with the overwhelming needs. Please don't CFR me on this, because I am certain there was no posted bulletin -- I only know because I was serving in a Branch Presidency at the time as both clerk and executive secretary and the word came down through training.

[Scott Lloyd]

Social Security and Medicare yes, but it has not always been the case with other benefits -- the Church used to discourage accepting welfare benefits except through the Church. There was a change in attitude during the Carter/Reagan recession when the Church realized it couldn't deal with the overwhelming needs. Please don't CFR me on this, because I am certain there was no posted bulletin -- I only know because I was serving in a Branch Presidency at the time as both clerk and executive secretary and the word came down through training.

My perception is that it is still the principle in the Church: that you rely on personal and family resources first, and failing that, receive assistance from the Church via priesthood leadership. If there has been a change in members being discouraged from seeking government handouts or welfare assistance, I'm unaware of it.

Incidentally, if you were a clerk and/or an executive secretary, you were serving a branch presidency but you were not serving in a branch presidency. The branch presidency consists of the branch president and his two counselors just as a bishopric consists of the bishop and his two counselors and a stake presidency is composed of the stake president and his two counselors.

[Calm]

My perception is that it is still the principle in the Church: that you rely on personal and family resources first, and failing that, receive assistance from the Church via priesthood leadership. If there has been a change in members being discouraged from seeking government handouts or welfare assistance, I'm unaware of it.

Up in Canada, the order is personal, family, government and then church...but that might be because of the extended social programs in place.

I am aware of young mothers here in Utah being encouraged to make use of WIC: http://www.health.utah.gov/wic/

Edited July 2, 2013 by calmoriah

[Stone holm]

Up in Canada, the order is personal, family, government and then church...but that might be because of the extended social programs in place.

I am aware of young mothers here in Utah being encouraged to make use of WIC: http://www.health.utah.gov/wic/

Yeah I remember a young mother who is a member and a friend raging about socialism and the welfare state and then indicating she had to get her WIC....lol, there is a mental disconnect at times.

[Scott Lloyd]

Just tried unsuccessfully to find something on the topic in "selected policies" section of Handbook 2.

Maybe Stone holm is right; perhaps the Church doesn't discourage going on "the dole" as it used to.

Our primary purpose [in establishing the Church’s welfare program] was to set up, in so far as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people to help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principle of the lives of our Church membership.

[Stone holm]

Just tried unsuccessfully to find something on the topic in "selected policies" section of Handbook 2.

Maybe Stone holm is right; perhaps the Church doesn't discourage going on "the dole" as it used to.

Yeah, I don't think you see those brochures laying around much anymore. Given that enlisted Privates in the military with children often have to go on welfare to keep food on the table, and certain employers don't pay enough to survive on -- job no longer equals ability to survive even frugally. Not to say there aren't abuses. We are struggling to figure out the right balance here in VT. If we had something comparable to the CCC nationwide I think it would help considerably about the dole part, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation and cannot imagine what it must be like in some of the States.

[Scott Lloyd]

Yeah, I don't think you see those brochures laying around much anymore. Given that enlisted Privates in the military with children often have to go on welfare to keep food on the table, and certain employers don't pay enough to survive on -- job no longer equals ability to survive even frugally. Not to say there aren't abuses. We are struggling to figure out the right balance here in VT. If we had something comparable to the CCC nationwide I think it would help considerably about the dole part, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation and cannot imagine what it must be like in some of the States.

I did go back to Handbook 2 and looked at it a little more carefully.

See this section.

I note that the 1936 quote from the First Presidency about abolishing the evils of the dole is featured prominently in the first two paragraphs.

And though government assistance is neither expressly forbidden nor expressly allowed, the sense I get from the provisions in Chapter 6 is to do all possible to avoid needing it, including reliance on "the Lord's storehouse," which is a concept I really like:

The Lord’s Storehouse

In some locations the Church has established buildings called bishops’ storehouses. When members receive permission from their bishop, they may go to the bishops’ storehouse to obtain food and clothing. But the Lord’s storehouse is not limited to a building used to distribute food and clothing to the poor. It also includes Church members’ offerings of time, talents, compassion, materials, and financial means that are made available to the bishop to help care for the poor and needy. The Lord’s storehouse, then, exists in each ward. These offerings are “to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, … every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God” (D&C 82:18–19). The bishop is the agent of the Lord’s storehouse.

It occurs to me that if this concept is implemented as it should be, that would obviate the need for any government assistance.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Scott Lloyd

[Avatar4321]

You think there is some kind of media blanket that prevents such recognition?

There isn't a need for one. The natural inclination of the work is that it is something that wont naturally be recognized by the world in general.

[Stone holm]

I did go back to Handbook 2 and look at it a little more carefully.

See this section.

I note that the 1936 quote from the First Presidency about abolishing the evils of the dole is featured prominently in the first two paragraphs.

And though government assistance is neither expressly forbidden nor expressly allowed, the sense I get from the provisions in Chapter 6 is to do all possible to avoid needing it, including reliance on "the Lord's storehouse," which is a concept I really like:

It occurs to me that if this concept is implemented as it should be, that would obviate the need for any government assistance.

I think when you talk about the "dole" you need to be careful. IMNSHO, the Brethren are talking about people who become addicted to welfare and then pass the addiction on down the line. That does not mean that every government program should be considered the "dole" -- which is where some people have gone. Right now in VT we have a problem which is that in order to protect the State welfare system they are encouraging people to get classified as "disabled" because that puts them on the Federal system. Right now there is massive abuse of "disability" in the State, and I suspect in the nation. There is of course potential abuse of the Church welfare system as well. The counsel when I was a Bishop, and I tended to be possibly over conservative when it came to fast funds, was that we should come down on the liberal side when in doubt. But I saw very little abuse, allow there were always people talking about abuse.

The real problem that the nation faces is that women in the past have not gotten the level of education they need in order to provide for their families. I think that is changing, but we have a real problem with women who are quite capable of having babies, but not capable of supporting them -- and I realize that women don't make babies on their own and it is not just a problem with women. There is no simple solution to this because if you penalize the women, the primary sufferers are the children. In addition, we have a foster care system that is severely broken. My wife and I helped rescue a kid, whom we cherish as a foster child and our family is his family now. But there are so many kids out there in need of decent homes. Although I am sure there were abuses in the orphanage system, but from what I have witnessed -- it would be better in many cases to move back to an orphanage system than the current foster parent system. Empty nester LDS and LDS without children of their own, really should pray about becoming foster parents. There is so much need out there. We preach the importance of the family, and that is true there is nothing more important than a good family -- but the family is a double edged sword, there is nothing worse than a bad family. In many cases, the last thing those kids need to be doing is spending more time with their families, their familes are the problem -- we are seeing this demonstrated in the success of magnet schools in the inner cities where the kids basically spend all their time in school and in internships and they are succeeding, in part because of the education, but also because they are not spending time at home anymore..

[Scott Lloyd]

I think when you talk about the "dole" you need to be careful. IMNSHO, the Brethren are talking about people who become addicted to welfare and then pass the addiction on down the line. That does not mean that every government program should be considered the "dole" -- which is where some people have gone. Right now in VT we have a problem which is that in order to protect the State welfare system they are encouraging people to get classified as "disabled" because that puts them on the Federal system. Right now there is massive abuse of "disability" in the State, and I suspect in the nation. There is of course potential abuse of the Church welfare system as well. The counsel when I was a Bishop, and I tended to be possibly over conservative when it came to fast funds, was that we should come down on the liberal side when in doubt. But I saw very little abuse, allow there were always people talking about abuse.

The real problem that the nation faces is that women in the past have not gotten the level of education they need in order to provide for their families. I think that is changing, but we have a real problem with women who are quite capable of having babies, but not capable of supporting them -- and I realize that women don't make babies on their own and it is not just a problem with women. There is no simple solution to this because if you penalize the women, the primary sufferers are the children. In addition, we have a foster care system that is severely broken. My wife and I helped rescue a kid, whom we cherish as a foster child and our family is his family now. But there are so many kids out there in need of decent homes. Although I am sure there were abuses in the orphanage system, but from what I have witnessed -- it would be better in many cases to move back to an orphanage system than the current foster parent system. Empty nester LDS and LDS without children of their own, really should pray about becoming foster parents. There is so much need out there. We preach the importance of the family, and that is true there is nothing more important than a good family -- but the family is a double edged sword, there is nothing worse than a bad family. In many cases, the last thing those kids need to be doing is spending more time with their families, their familes are the problem -- we are seeing this demonstrated in the success of magnet schools in the inner cities where the kids basically spend all their time in school and in internships and they are succeeding, in part because of the education, but also because they are not spending time at home anymore..

It has been said before by people smarter than I, but the root cause of all these social ills you speak of here is fatherlessness. People who think they have an entitlement to engage in free-wheeling, casual sex outside of a committed, stable marriage between a man and a woman. The sexual revolution that began in the sixties and continues unabated today, with the concomitant emergence of the divorce culture have saddled us today with all these problems. Fatherlessness is the engine that drives all other social ills.

Part of the Lord's storehouse, it seems to me, should be prevention, and that includes teaching strict observance of the law of chastity and withstanding the social pressure to be casual about it.

[Stone holm]

It has been said before by people smarter than I, but the root cause of all these social ills you speak of here is fatherlessness. People who think they have an entitlement to engage in free-wheeling, casual sex outside of a committed, stable marriage between a man and a woman. The sexual revolution that began in the sixties and continues unabated today, with the concomitant emergence of the divorce culture have saddled us today with all these problems. Fatherlessness is the engine that drives all other social ills.

Part of the Lord's storehouse, it seems to me, should be prevention, and that includes teaching strict observance of the law of chastity and withstanding the social pressure to be casual about it.

Well yes I believe that we should be preaching total abstinence before marriage. On the other hand, the studies seem to suggest that those States which adopted an abstinence only approach to sex education and avoiding pregnancies had teenage pregnancies go into the stratosphere. If we want to cut down on the number of teenage pregnancies and "fatherless" pregnancies and the number of abortions, we need to cut down on the number of pregnancies -- and that means we need to get these women on birthcontrol. Meanwhile, we need to reinstill the fear of getting a girl pregnant in the boys.

There seems to be developing also another worrisome trend, that is girls intentionally getting pregnant for a variety of reasons. Some may have the mistaken belief that it will lock the boy to them, some are doing it for welfare purposes, and some are simply lonely and they want someone that will give them unconditional love and upon whom they can lavish their love without competition. These are still the minority, but they are there. Am not sure that we as a culture right now, know how to get that under control.

One person on another thread recommended good old fashion shunning. I grew up under that system in the midwest. It is an effective deterrent, but it is also socially brutal and the shame lands primarily upon the young women which is unfair. Right now, however, I am not sure there is an effective alternative.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Stone holm

[Avatar4321]

Well yes I believe that we should be preaching total abstinence before marriage. On the other hand, the studies seem to suggest that those States which adopted an abstinence only approach to sex education and avoiding pregnancies had teenage pregnancies go into the stratosphere. If we want to cut down on the number of teenage pregnancies and "fatherless" pregnancies and the number of abortions, we need to cut down on the number of pregnancies -- and that means we need to get these women on birthcontrol. Meanwhile, we need to reinstill the fear of getting a girl pregnant in the boys.

There seems to be developing also another worrisome trend, that is girls intentionally getting pregnant for a variety of reasons. Some may have the mistaken belief that it will lock the boy to them, some are doing it for welfare purposes, and some are simply lonely and they want someone that will give them unconditional love and upon whom they can lavish their love without competition. These are still the minority, but they are there. Am not sure that we as a culture right now, know how to get that under control.

One person on another thread recommended good old fashion shunning. I grew up under that system in the midwest. It is an effective deterrent, but it is also socially brutal and the shame lands primarily upon the young women which is unfair. Right now, however, I am not sure there is an effective alternative.

The States teaching abstinence lack the Spiritual component needed to truly inspire people to follow it.

If anyone should be shunned it's the man who abandons his responsibilities.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Avatar4321

[Stone holm]

The States teaching abstinence lack the Spiritual component needed to truly inspire people to follow it.

If anyone should be shunned it's the man who abandons his responsibilities.

True, but in reality that isn't how it played out most of the time back then. We still had abortions, but they were generally for the rich girls who quietly disappeared for awhile and thereby avoided getting bounced from school.

[pmccombs1]

It has been said before by people smarter than I, but the root cause of all these social ills you speak of here is fatherlessness. People who think they have an entitlement to engage in free-wheeling, casual sex outside of a committed, stable marriage between a man and a woman. The sexual revolution that began in the sixties and continues unabated today, with the concomitant emergence of the divorce culture have saddled us today with all these problems. Fatherlessness is the engine that drives all other social ills.

Part of the Lord's storehouse, it seems to me, should be prevention, and that includes teaching strict observance of the law of chastity and withstanding the social pressure to be casual about it.

I think you correctly identify the absence of the father as a fundamental issue of social decline, and particularly that of the family. However, I believe you do not look back far enough in your assessment of the root cause behind this absence.

I realize it is a popular religious notion to blame social ills on sexual licentiousness, and in the current decade it is also common to look back on the mid-twentieth century, to the height of the "nuclear family," as the traditional ideal allegedly "having persisted for thousands of years." But this is a superficial and incorrect understanding of historical sociology.

In fact, the "nuclear family" was an artificial and short-lived reaction to the destruction of the household family (which is the form that had persisted longest throughout written history), and it happened around the same time as the industrial revolution and for similar reasons. You will find men like Horace Mann witnessing and fretting over the removal of the father from the home in order to participate in a new kind of economy. This resulted in the parens patriae doctrine which also removed children from the home and placed them as wards of the state instead of the family.

This resulted in households where the house stood empty for most of the day, and the money revolution (which enabled industrialization), also abstracted personal relationships by obsoleting direct human inter-dependence. The now defunct household family was quickly replaced with the "nuclear family," which was an exalted charade that introduced deterministic "roles" to each family member where these roles had once come naturally and organically out of necessity.

It turns out that many people find it difficult to be assigned to a role with an accompanying ideal mode of fulfillment. They prefer to hear their own callings, which are determined by the possibilities their culture presents to them. Many of them feel trapped in the play-acting and will attempt to fight "the man" who now mandates these roles where nature used to do so. Hence things like the "sexual revolution" and modern egalitarian language and leveling. Combine that with weakened or abstracted personal relationships, and there is your divorce culture. These move the culture in the direction of equilibrium defined by the abstract money economy (the new status quo), though people aren't consciously aware of it.

So, the problem of paternal absenteeism cannot be solved by simply convincing everyone to behave themselves sexually--which would be merely addressing a symptom of another, deeper problem. What we need is for people to return home to the household, and to live again in close dependence on each other. This won't happen until there is some sort of collapse in the advanced money economy that will call for closer communal and family togetherness. Then we can stop role-playing and get back to a more natural sort of living.

[pmccombs1]

I was thinking about the subject when I woke up this morning, and was wondering -- why hasn't the Church produced a Mother Theresa, a Dorothy Day, or a Ghandi amongst our general membership. I realize that Joseph Smith, Jr. and George A. Smith at times came close as did other Prophets. But what about the general membership?

In the more "orthodox" branches of Christianity, there is an idea of vocation that is different from what he have in Mormonism. In Catholicism, for example, people often hear their own callings and may decide to enter service as a missionary, teacher, member of the priesthood, or so forth. Sometimes vocation will take them out into the world, and other times they stay within the confines of the Church. These people feel directly accountable to God for this calling, and not to an earthly hierarchy. In any case, because the work first called to them, they throw all of their passion into it and make it their life's work.

In Mormonism, we have an aversion to "priestcraft" and the aspiring to callings. We're afraid that people might do it to get gain. So we allow other people to hear our callings for us and then expect ourselves to fulfill them, even if we don't particularly connect with them. In addition, our callings usually keep us within the context of the Church and its roles and programs, so they rarely make a difference in the outside world on the scale of a Mother Theresa or a Dorothy Day. Those great ladies weren't out to get famous or to get gain, but they were certainly in the world making waves.

Why don't we have people like them? Well, nobody has been, or can be, "set apart" for the sort of work that matters to outsiders and that inspires them on a grand scale. Mother Theresa, Ghandi, and Dorothy Day could do it because it was part of who they were, their personal sense of justice, and of what they desired. But I find my church callings have certain formulas and are subject to quantifying and reporting to the authority that defined the role. It's my "church job," akin to a career. Can you imagine: "Mother Theresa, why are you so great?" To which she responds, "I'm just fulfilling the job description given me by the Pope."

I always worry that Mormonism could disappear from the world without leaving so much as a memory, and it wouldn't make much of a measurable difference to the quality of people's lives. We seem to believe (mostly) that, to really make a difference to people, we first have to get them into the Church. Therefore it is typically to its own members that the Church and its "great ones" really make any difference at all. Between church callings and careers, we Mormons have little time for vocation.

[Stone holm]

In the more "orthodox" branches of Christianity, there is an idea of vocation that is different from what he have in Mormonism. In Catholicism, for example, people often hear their own callings and may decide to enter service as a missionary, teacher, member of the priesthood, or so forth. Sometimes vocation will take them out into the world, and other times they stay within the confines of the Church. These people feel directly accountable to God for this calling, and not to an earthly hierarchy. In any case, because the work first called to them, they throw all of their passion into it and make it their life's work.

In Mormonism, we have an aversion to "priestcraft" and the aspiring to callings. We're afraid that people might do it to get gain. So we allow other people to hear our callings for us and then expect ourselves to fulfill them, even if we don't particularly connect with them. In addition, our callings usually keep us within the context of the Church and its roles and programs, so they rarely make a difference in the outside world on the scale of a Mother Theresa or a Dorothy Day. Those great ladies weren't out to get famous or to get gain, but they were certainly in the world making waves.

Why don't we have people like them? Well, nobody has been, or can be, "set apart" for the sort of work that matters to outsiders and that inspires them on a grand scale. Mother Theresa, Ghandi, and Dorothy Day could do it because it was part of who they were, their personal sense of justice, and of what they desired. But I find my church callings have certain formulas and are subject to quantifying and reporting to the authority that defined the role. It's my "church job," akin to a career. Can you imagine: "Mother Theresa, why are you so great?" To which she responds, "I'm just fulfilling the job description given me by the Pope."

I always worry that Mormonism could disappear from the world without leaving so much as a memory, and it wouldn't make much of a measurable difference to the quality of people's lives. We seem to believe (mostly) that, to really make a difference to people, we first have to get them into the Church. Therefore it is typically to its own members that the Church and its "great ones" really make any difference at all. Between church callings and careers, we Mormons have little time for vocation.

One would hope that Mormonism would, however, spiritually motivate people to be "great ones". Dorothy Day had at times to succeed in what she was doing in spite of the Catholic Church, probably was the same for Mother Theresa at times. Yet their religion was also inspiring them. True we have a lot of responsibilities within the Church -- but that can be said of others. Is there more to it than that? I gave you a bump on this by the way.

[Calm]

I always worry that Mormonism could disappear from the world without leaving so much as a memory, and it wouldn't make much of a measurable difference to the quality of people's lives. We seem to believe (mostly) that, to really make a difference to people, we first have to get them into the Church.

http://ldscharities.org/?lang=eng

http://ldscharities.org/initiatives/clean-water?lang=eng#

The sacrifice and sweat of 1,000 days brings not only a clean water well, but also a new life to the central part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

http://ldscharities.org/articles/indonesian-water-project-brings-clean-water-to-28000-villagers?lang=eng

That day celebrated the completion of the pipeline that brought clean, fresh water flowing to four villages

http://ldscharities.org/articles/a-reason-to-rejoice?lang=eng

In December 2008, the Kamuli water sanitation project was completed, supplying clean water to 48,000 people in rural villages in Uganda. Fifteen new boreholes were drilled and twenty existing boreholes were rehabilitated. In addition, 10 schools in the community received water catchment systems and hand washing stations. Villagers received education and training on sanitation, hygiene, and water source management.

The Kamuli project has changed the lives of these Ugandans forever. Here are their stories.

[Stone holm]

I think you correctly identify the absence of the father as a fundamental issue of social decline, and particularly that of the family. However, I believe you do not look back far enough in your assessment of the root cause behind this absence.

I realize it is a popular religious notion to blame social ills on sexual licentiousness, and in the current decade it is also common to look back on the mid-twentieth century, to the height of the "nuclear family," as the traditional ideal allegedly "having persisted for thousands of years." But this is a superficial and incorrect understanding of historical sociology.

In fact, the "nuclear family" was an artificial and short-lived reaction to the destruction of the household family (which is the form that had persisted longest throughout written history), and it happened around the same time as the industrial revolution and for similar reasons. You will find men like Horace Mann witnessing and fretting over the removal of the father from the home in order to participate in a new kind of economy. This resulted in the parens patriae doctrine which also removed children from the home and placed them as wards of the state instead of the family.

This resulted in households where the house stood empty for most of the day, and the money revolution (which enabled industrialization), also abstracted personal relationships by obsoleting direct human inter-dependence. The now defunct household family was quickly replaced with the "nuclear family," which was an exalted charade that introduced deterministic "roles" to each family member where these roles had once come naturally and organically out of necessity.

It turns out that many people find it difficult to be assigned to a role with an accompanying ideal mode of fulfillment. They prefer to hear their own callings, which are determined by the possibilities their culture presents to them. Many of them feel trapped in the play-acting and will attempt to fight "the man" who now mandates these roles where nature used to do so. Hence things like the "sexual revolution" and modern egalitarian language and leveling. Combine that with weakened or abstracted personal relationships, and there is your divorce culture. These move the culture in the direction of equilibrium defined by the abstract money economy (the new status quo), though people aren't consciously aware of it.

So, the problem of paternal absenteeism cannot be solved by simply convincing everyone to behave themselves sexually--which would be merely addressing a symptom of another, deeper problem. What we need is for people to return home to the household, and to live again in close dependence on each other. This won't happen until there is some sort of collapse in the advanced money economy that will call for closer communal and family togetherness. Then we can stop role-playing and get back to a more natural sort of living.

Gave you a bump on this. I agree and have argued, not terribly successfully, in Church at times that the breakdown in the family has to do primarily with the breakdown in the cohesiveness of the family as an important economic team. I lived next to a very conservative Amish colony in Indiana for years. Their family values are reinforced at every level and the family and community was intensely interwoven. They were an amazing community to observe.

[Calm]

The self-sustainability of governmental health ministries is another priority, because countries with developing health infrastructures need training and education.

“We plan to shift our primary focus to immunization self-sustainability in developing countries,” Brother Riley said, emphasizing that historically, these countries have not been able to provide an adequate number of vaccines to citizens on their own because of lack of education, funds, or both.

“This funding isn’t going to be there forever for developing countries,” Brother Riley said. “We’re trying to build a local culture of volunteerism and self-reliance.”

http://ldscharities.org/articles/church-works-toward-world-goal-to-eliminate-preventable-diseases?lang=eng

[Stone holm]

http://ldscharities.org/?lang=eng

http://ldscharities....water?lang=eng#

http://ldscharities....lagers?lang=eng

http://ldscharities....ejoice?lang=eng

I tend to agree with PMcCombs on this one. Am not sure you are seeing his point.

[Calm]

Rather than having a few members well known for directing charitable work, I think it is much better that people have come to expect the faceless masses of LDS showing up to help at disaster sites with no individual public recognition expected.

https://www.lds.org/topics/humanitarian-service/helping-hands

The yellow shirts are becoming a familiar site, familiar enough nonLDS are joining up as well from what I've read when they show up at a site to volunteer because of the demonstrated effectiveness of the groups.

[Calm]

it wouldn't make much of a measurable difference to the quality of people's lives. We seem to believe (mostly) that, to really make a difference to people, we first have to get them into the Church.

I have shown several examples of changes to the quality of thousands and thousands of people's lives who are not members and changes that will last a long time because they were made in such a way as to be self sufficient once established rather than having to continue to rely on donations.

If the Church disappeared today, there would still be thousands and thousands of people---maybe even millions---out here that had better sight, more mobility due to wheelchairs, better health due to immunizations and clean water projects and better education, lifealtering changes to their lives that were given not to members, but pretty much complete strangers (at least at the beginning) who were in need.

Since 1985, LDS Charities (aka Humanitarian Services) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has provided aid regardless of cultural or religious boundaries. Emergency assistance is provided through the Humanitarian Aid Fund, and long-term aid is provided through major initiatives such as clean water, wheelchairs, neonatal resuscitation training, vision care, immunization, food production, and a variety of local area initiatives.

Two tenets of humanitarian aid define LDS Charities: 1) One hundred percent of every dollar donated is used to help those in need without regard to race, religion, or ethnic origin, and 2) LDS Charities helps people attain self-sufficiency so they can be self-reliant long after LDS Charities departs.

In 2011, help was provided to more than 2 million people in 132 countries. Currently we are receiving donations for:

Humanitarian Aid Fund

Clean Water

Wheelchairs

Neonatal Resuscitation Training

Vision Care

Food Production & Nutrition

http://www.ldsphilanthropies.org/humanitarian-services/?cid=lds-ldspPage Edited July 3, 2013 by calmoriah