Mormons and Fast Sunday

Tomorrow is Fast Sunday for Mormons. When I say “fast” I don’t mean the opposite of slow; I mean not eating or drinking. This is something that all Mormons around the world do on the first Sunday of every month. We go hungry. And thirsty. On purpose. We then take the money that we would have spent on food and give it to be used by the poor. The church has huge farms around the world where food is raised especially for church members who are in need. They are run by members of the church and staffed by volunteers.

When we lived in Utah Mister and I worked a few times a year helping out at the production facilities. We packaged cheese at the dairy, screwed lids on jars of spaghetti sauce (they were going down a conveyor belt and I felt like we were in the opening sequence of Laverne and Shirley the whole time. But with spaghetti sauce not beer.)  Once my sister and I even worked in the meat-packing plant. We were on the clean-up crew and it’s probably one of the grossest things I’ve ever had to do. We had to wear giant rubber boots to keep from slipping as we hosed the congealed fat off of every single surface. Gah! So nasty! But being a Mormon means working hard to take care of those around us.

Now that I’m the Relief Society President I help the needy families in the congregation figure out what food and toiletries they might need and fill out an order form for them to go pick it up at a special store every two weeks.  It’s like a food pantry but on a much bigger and more organized scale. The members who receive help are expected to help out in other ways where possible. It’s a pretty fantastic system to make sure that everyone is watched over and helped the way the Lord would want.

Here’s a cool video that shows how the system works around the world.

| Filed under Church, Good Things

2 thoughts on “Mormons and Fast Sunday

  1. As a non-Mormon this fascinating to me. I like that there is accountability and a desire to pay it forward by those who have been helped and that everyone understands what ‘charity’ really means. Beautiful really.
    Wouldn’t it be spectacular if our country’s welfare system worked this way? (Or at least part of the way?) I imagine it would be somewhat difficult to implement and an article from 2002 makes the same claim.
    http://www.economist.com/node/988818

  2. Great video! Boy, I remember the hours and years as a kid I got up with my family at 6 a.m. to go pick cherries or peaches at Church Welfare orchards, then stand in the shed and sort out the rejects. I probably ate half as much as I picked! In Michigan I hoed beets. For decades I served in canneries in a half dozen states, and even got to work in the massive Bishop’s storehouse in Austin. Ahhh! Memories!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *