In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, January 16, Sister Kristin M. Yee of the Aid Society basic presidency and Sister Tracy Y. Browning of the Main basic presidency participated at a meals drive in St. Louis. , Missouri.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Meals Drive was offered by the City League of Metropolitan St. Louis, a corporation that has supplied social providers to the St. Louis space for greater than a century. Its mission is to empower African People and others to safe financial self-sufficiency, social equality, and civil rights.
A whole bunch of volunteers, together with many Latter-day Saints, braved chilly and wet climate to assist distribute meals to households in want. Some 2,000 containers of canned items and non-perishable objects have been distributed, based on a information launch on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s imaginative and prescient was that all of us be handled as kids of God,” stated Sister Yee, second counselor within the Aid Society basic presidency. “He noticed that. He understood that. He felt that and so will we. At The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we imagine that we’re all kids of our Heavenly Father, and that all of us innately have worth and price due to that relationship with God.”
Sister Browning, second counselor within the Main basic presidency, stated, “It has been fantastic to see all these individuals who went out with no solar, chilly climate, and rain, simply right here to assist and serve these locally. It is a actually stunning spirit right here in the present day.”
Sister Yee and Sister Browning have been joined by Elder Randall Ok. Bennett, a Normal Authority Seventy and second counselor within the North America Central Space presidency. They every helped volunteers distribute containers to pregnant households.
“It’s a stunning factor that we’re on this collectively. We really feel like household,” Elder Bennett stated. “We’re brothers and sisters, and what households do is assist and love one another. That is what I see [here today] and that is what [the Rev. King b’s] the imaginative and prescient represents for me.”
Janice Grey was considered one of many who waited in line to obtain a field of meals for her household. “I believed it was a phenomenal strategy to hold Dr. Martin Luther King alive: his dream, his imaginative and prescient,” she stated. “It brings tears to my eyes realizing that we are able to nonetheless deal with one another, even in troublesome instances.”
The Church’s relationship with the league
Whereas visiting Church headquarters in December 2022, Michael P. McMillan, govt director of the City League of Metropolitan St. Louis, described the league’s relationship with the Church as “an amazing alignment.”
The connection started in 2020 when native Latter-day Saints started volunteering with the City League of Metropolitan St. Louis via JustServe, a Church-sponsored group service web site.
In all, the Church has donated greater than 120,000 kilos of meals to the league over the course of the pandemic, based on Monday’s information launch.
“The Church got here to our assist on quite a few events with volunteers wanting to present again after which they despatched truckloads of meals on a number of events that … we did not have to purchase due to the Church,” McMillan stated.
The Church has additionally supplied monetary help to the league’s job coaching program, Save Our Sons, in addition to its Grills to Glory program, a partnership between the League and native church buildings to strengthen communities.
In December 2022, the leaders of the City League of Metropolitan St. Louis toured Welfare Sq., the Humanitarian Middle and the Bishops Central Retailer. These visits helped league vice chairman James Clark see how the league’s mission aligns with that of the Church.
“Widespread Floor is being mission pushed, specializing in what Jesus would do,” Clark stated in an interview final December. “God has blessed us with the assets to have the ability to serve and feed folks in varied methods. [and] to have the ability to join with a accomplice who can ship the … issues that we have to strengthen what we’re doing on the bottom.”