The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Lexington North Stake helped distribute over 33,000 pounds of food to 20 Kentucky organizations last month as a part of their community outreach.
“We did it because we could and there was an identifiable need for help, and because when we can help, we should help,” said Claude J. Christensen, the Communications Director for Lexington North Stake.
In addition to donating to Lexington churches in need, the Lexington North Stake has been working to help Eastern Kentucky following the flooding and hardships they have gone through recently.
According to WYMT the ‘labor of love’ last August resulted in “nearly 2,800 members of the church from multiple states spent time in Eastern Kentucky mucking out homes and buildings, clearing debris, and tearing out drywall, flooring and carpets,” WYMT said.
This August, they delivered a truck full of 40,000 pounds of food to Jacob’s Ladder Food Pantry for families who were affected by the mass flooding.
“Some, they are very thankful. And others are even more than that,” said Elder Lee Warren with the church to WYMT. “You see tears in their eyes, they know that the service that’s being provided here by the pantry is one that will give them meals for a few days.”
All of their work to bring services and food to Eastern Kentucky has been a part of the Latter Day Saints’ Eastern Kentucky Humanitarian Food and Hope Project.
“Eastern Kentucky has experienced a seemingly continuous string of difficult challenges over the past few years,” Christensen said in a press release for North Stake. “A group of local congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is determined to address this situation with a coordinated and sustained effort to provide food and other humanitarian services to the good people of Eastern Kentucky.”
Since 2023, the church reports that approximately 222,000 pounds of food have been delivered to multiple sites on multiple dates in Central and Eastern Kentucky.
Foods and goods, while the majority, are not the only servies the North Stake has prioritized.
“As important as the food distribution effort is, it addressed only one aspect of the existing needs,” Christensen said.
The North Stake has also worked to provide additional aid and comfort in the form of handmade caps, quilts and blankets.
While a lot of work has gone into assisting the Eastern Kentucky ares, the North Stake is still present in its more local community surrounding Lexington.
Rowan County organizations like the Gateway Homeless Coalition, the Doves Domestic Violence Center, the Sterling Community Food Coalition, the Bluegrass Community Health Center and the First Baptist Church of Winchester were recipients of the church’s recent large scale distribution of 33,000 pounds of food.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and JustServe have been good to Rowan County. We appreciate the efforts they have made to help others, and we look forward to working with them again,” The Rowan County Fiscal Court said in a post after the donation two months ago.
The North Stake is still continuing to distribute donations to organizations in need and are working on two active projects at the moment.
“We have discovered a need for hygiene kits that can be distributed to those who need them,” Christensen said. “The kits will be secured from the Bishop’s Storehouse who, over time, has developed a product line for hygiene kits as they are usually needed in areas of general poverty or where a disaster of some kind has happened.” Their other project is “more joyful” and festive which involves packaging and distributing hundreds of Christmas ornaments for areas that may see a need for them.