Food Orders

One of my jobs as a Bishop is to help the poor and the needy. One of the ways I do that is by authorizing food orders which are filled at the Bishop's Storehouse in Lindon, a few miles south of American Fork. The process goes like this:

• I become aware of a serious need through personal observation, reports that reach me from other ward members, or a person visiting me in my office.
• I fill out a Needs & Resources Analysis: Self Reliance Plan for the person or family in need.
• I authorize a 2 week food order and communicate that approval to the Relief Society President.
• She visits the individual or family in their home, helps them prepare a meal plan, and notes the items & quantities they need to feed themselves for 2 weeks. 
• She then signs the food order and returns it to me for my counter signature.
• I file a copy of the food order in my office. 
• Another copy of the authorized food order is given to the person or family in need.
• They take the order to the Lindon Bishop's Storehouse and return with a 2 week supply of food.
• A few days later, I get a report in the mail from the Storehouse with the food order attached. This report shows me the dollar value of the food or other commodities that were distributed.
• The recipients perform some previously agreed-upon service in exchange for the help they just received.

A few items of interest about the LDS Church Welfare Program and Bishop's Storehouses in particular:

• The welfare program began in 1936 in response to the great depression. 2011 marks its 75th anniversary.
• The Church maintains dozens of food production and food processing facilities around the world that supply the system. For example, adjacent to the Lindon Bishop's Storehouse is a cannery that supplies canned peaches and pears to the welfare program. My family and I have volunteered many times at the cannery. Our oldest daughter met her future husband volunteering on the night shift at the Church's peanut butter plant in Houston.
• The Church maintains more than 100 Bishop's Storehouses throughout the US and Canada.
• The Church supplies commodities to many food banks and soup kitchens through the Bishop's Storehouse network. In Houston, for example, Deseret brand peanut butter is a hot commodity with the Houston Food Bank. 
• No money every changes hands when a patron receives a food order. The Bishop's Storehouse is a grocery store without cash registers. 
• The number of SKU's (inventory line items) in a Bishop's Storehouse is limited to a few hundred. Items produced by the Church (such as canned peaches and peanut butter) carry the Deseret label. Other items (such as disposable diapers) are the same national brands one would find in a traditional super market.
• Several hundred food orders are filled each day at a typical Bishop's Storehouse.
• Bishops and Relief Society Presidents are advised to provide enough help to sustain life, but not lifestyle.

Abuses such as feeding animals or selling the food do occur, but they are minimal. In general, the Bishop's Storehouse food order system is a terrific program that helps many people make it through tough times with their self-respect intact.

Behind Every Door

On Tuesday, June 21, 2011, I spent 3 hours with the previous Bishop of the American Fork 29th Ward going through the ward list, talking about every person. We got through the H's. On Sunday, June 26, 2011, we spent another 3 hours and got part way through the S's. Tonight we spent 2 more hours together and we finished the list. It took us 8 hours of debriefing for him to share insights gleaned from 6 years of working with the 563 members of our ward. A Mormon Bishop is a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, a confessor, a cheer leader, a coach, a judge, a diplomat, a CEO and a motivational speaker in addition to an ecclesiastical leader, preacher, pastor, youth minister and minister. I now know many intimate, confidential details about people that I will take to my grave. At one point in our discussion, this beloved former Bishop turned to me and said, "You know, there are issues behind every door." Shakespeare called the vicissitudes of this life "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1. Only the Savior Jesus Christ achieved perfection in mortality. None of us escape trials. "In the world ye shall have tribulation." John 16:33. The secret is to find "joy in the journey." Thomas S. Monson, October 2008 General Conference. "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." John 16:.33.
--
When I got home tonight, my wife asked me how my evening had gone. "It was a very good evening," I replied as I swept her off her feet and gave her a big hug and a kiss.

Kodiak

Wednesday, June 22, through Saturday, June 25, 2011, I spent with about 60 other people on a Kodiak course in and around Star Valley, Wyoming. Kodiak, as implemented in the American Fork East Stake, is a leadership training experience for young men aged 16 - 19 where mission prep meets high adventure. As the new Bishop of the American Fork 29th Ward, I accompanied our Young Men's President, one of our returned missionaries, and nine of our Priests as we rappelled down a 40 foot cliff, smashed foodstuffs from gallons of milk to watermelons with a giant mallet, lit fireworks that are highly illegal in Utah, toured the Aviat airplane manufacturing plant (home of the Husky), played war games, shot off homemade 2 liter bottle rockets (longest hang time 10.7 seconds), ran a length of the cold Snake River below Jackson (22,500 cubic feet per second, largest rapids - Lunch Counter - class 4), and performed a number of service projects around the ranch where we stayed. We arose at 6:30 a.m. and bedded down about midnight. Country Cooking catered the hearty chuck wagon-style food. 4 motor homes and a handful of pickup trucks transported everyone and everything. Presentations were in an old barn with a gravel floor.
--
Themes included "armoring up" via personal scripture study and prayer a la Ephesians 6:11-17, feeling and being guided by the spirit, mentors and mentoring, and getting along with difficult missionary companions. Most of the young men had significant spiritual experiences. Tears flowed freely. Testimony meeting the final night was a highlight. Days were peppered with literally dozens of thoughts and prayers. When an officer with
the Utah National Guard slammed a 4 foot sword against the chest of a young man wearing "battle rattle" body armor used in Afghanistan, every head was forward and every eye was focused.
--
My extemporaneous presentation was an exegesis of 3 Nephi 18:20, Mormon 9:21, and Moroni 7:26 - whatever we ask the Father in the name of Jesus Christ will be granted as long as it is a righteous desire and we ask in faith. I illustrated this promise with four examples:

• Soon after I arrived in Lince (Lima) Peru as a 19-year-old missionary, I was overcome with homesickness. The sights were foreign, the smells nauseating. The food was strange and my stomach felt like an erupting volcano. The sounds were raucous and difficult to understand. I sweated profusely day and night. I did not think I could endure 22 months (In those days one spent the first 2 months of his 2 year mission in the LTM - Language Training Mission) of this disturbing exotica. So, as I said my evening prayers one night, I asked the Father in the name of Jesus Christ to calm my troubled soul. As I climbed into the top bunk, I was shown a vision that spoke peace and banished my anxieties in an instant. I saw my family gathered at the Salt Lake Airport, welcoming me home from my mission. Now knowing the end from the beginning, I embraced mission work with a passion and quickly learned to love Peru and Peruvians. Parenthetically, when I did return home at the end of my mission, the reunion in the Salt Lake Airport was precisely as I had seen it in vision almost 2 years before. 
• Many years later, I went to the airport to head out on a business trip. Those were the days of paper airline tickets, and I carelessly left my tickets on the dashboard of the car driven by my oldest son. I soon discovered my missing tickets as I waited in line to check in. I didn't have the  means to purchase new tickets, so I turned to my Heavenly Father in prayer. "Father, I ask thee in the name of Jesus Christ, to inspire my son to see my tickets on the dashboard, stop and turn the car around right now, return to the airport, and bring me my tickets." About 15 minutes later, when I was just seconds away from my turn at the check in counter, my son appeared and handed me my tickets. "You forgot these, Dad."
• The Young Men's President in my ward is an astronomer at BYU. A few years ago, he and his wife made a list of things they really wanted to accomplish. She wrote down that she wanted to spend one February on a tropical island. Later that year, my friend was offered a chance to run an evening astronomy program for the guests at a resort on Saipan in the Northern Marianas. The whole family spent the next February on a tropical island.
• On April 2, 2011, while my wife and I were watching the last session of General Conference, I got a distress call from a young wife and mother in my BYU ward. Her husband had just taken the car and stormed out of the house in an angry hail of threatening words. I got the impression that she needed to come to our home and spend some time with my wife, so I raced to Provo, gassed up the old pickup truck that was their second vehicle, and led her to our house in American Fork. I left her visiting with my wife while I attended the Priesthood Session. Upon my return, I called her husband on his cell phone. He said he was in Saint George headed for California, and every mile he got further away from Provo the better he felt. He had made up his mind to file for divorce. He said he would not contest anything - she could have the house, the car, the bank accounts, custody, etc. I told him as his Bishop to pull over to the side of the road right then and pray - I would be praying at the same time. My wife, the distraught young sister and I knelt beside our kitchen table and I offered a prayer. "Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ I ask thee to send thy spirit to Saint George right now and soften the heart of this sister's husband so he will return to her and love her." Less than a minute after I said "Amen" her cell phone rang. It was her husband. My wife and I tended their baby for the next two hours while they talked. She finally went home to Provo when her cell phone battery died. By about 1:30 a.m. her husband returned, a changed man, and this story has a happy ending.   

Hands on my Head

On June 19, 2011, immediately following Sacrament Meeting in the chapel, those of us in the newly-called Bishopric and our families congregated on the cultural hall stage to be set apart. I sat on a metal folding chair surrounded by 8 Melchizedek Priesthood holders, one of whom was my 82-year-old father, an emeritus Patriarch who in his prime gave hundreds of blessings in the American Fork East Stake. Each brother placed his right hand on my head and his left hand on the shoulder of the man to his left. The Stake President performed the actual setting apart, conferring on me the priesthood keys necessary to perform as a Bishop, and blessing me with the gift of discernment. I was authorized as the President of the Aaronic Priesthood, the Presiding High Priest, and the Common Judge in Israel in the American Fork 29th Ward. I was further blessed with prosperity in my personal life and the wisdom necessary to delegate everything except those things that only a Bishop can handle. Basically, the counselors, clerks and secretaries who serve with me in this Bishopric will administer most aspects of the programs of the Church, freeing me to minister to individual ward members. After the ordinance, I shook hands with each of the 8 brethren who had participated and then embraced President Ivins, tears streaming down my face.
--
I have had hands placed on my head before:
My father gave me a name and a blessing as an infant.
I was confirmed a member of the Church and given the gift of the Holy Ghost at age 8.
The Aaronic Priesthood was conferred upon me and I was ordained a Deacon at age 12.
I was ordained a Teacher at age 14, and a Priest at age 16.
The Melchizedek Priesthood was conferred upon me and I was ordained an Elder at age 18.
I was set apart as a full-time missionary at age 19.
I was ordained a High Priest in my early 40's and a Bishop just over a year ago.
In addition, I have been set apart to many callings in the Church over the years as my wife, our children and I have lived in wards in Utah, Massachusetts, Georgia, and Maryland.
My Dad has given me a number of powerful and prophetic father's blessings at key junctures in my life, and I have received a couple of health blessings following anointment with consecrated (extra virgin olive) oil.
In addition, I have been the living proxy for hundreds, maybe even thousands of Temple ordinances performed on behalf of deceased persons.
Occasionally when Priesthood brethren have placed their hands on my head, the experience has seemed rather pedestrian. Most of the time, though, the event has been accentuated with a certain spiritual sublimity.

A Rushing Wind

On the Day of Pentecost, one of the ways the Holy Ghost witnessed to the Apostles was "a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind." Acts 2:2. On March 27, 1836 at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, Joseph Smith, Jr., Oliver Cowdery, and George A. Smith all reported a mighty rushing wind among other remarkable spiritual outpourings. Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints edited by B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1932-1951), 2:428. Leonard J. Arrington, "Oliver Cowdery's Kirtland Ohio 'Sketch Book,'" BYU Studies, Volume 12:4, (Summer 1972), 426. Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London: Latter-day Saints Book Depot, 1854-1886), 11:10. On June 1, 1978 in the fourth floor council room of the Salt Lake Temple, President Spencer W. Kimball received the revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy males. President Kimball's counselors and ten of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were in the room at the time. Many later described the event as a spiritual outpouring more intense than anything they had previously experienced. Elder L. Tom Perry said he "felt something like the rushing of wind." Edward L. Kimball, "Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood," BYU Studies, Volume 47:2 (2008), 57.
--
On Sunday, June 19, 2011 in the American Fork 29th Ward Sacrament Meeting, I was sustained as the new Bishop of the Ward. As I arose when the Stake President called my name, a powerful spiritual wave flowed over me like a rushing wind. I heard a whooshing sound and felt air on my face. The spiritual feeling coursing through me was so intense that I lost my composure and began to weep. I had to dry my eyes more than once as I walked up to take my place on the stand. I have been blessed over the years with a number of significant spiritual wtinesses, but I had never before experienced this particular manifestation of the Holy Ghost.

Yesterday I was set apart as a Bishop

On June 19, 2011 (Father's Day), President Mark Ivins of the American Fork East Stake set me apart as Bishop of the American Fork 29th Ward. I was ordained a Bishop on June 13, 2010 by President Steven Owen of the BYU 8th (Married Student) Stake, and I served for 11 months as Bishop of the BYU 172nd Ward. When the BYU 8th Stake became the Springville YSA Stake on May 1, 2011, the married students I had presided over went into 11 different family wards in south Provo and my wife, Shannon & I went back to our home ward in American Fork. For 7 weeks I held no formal Church calling. Now I am back in the traces and a new adventure has begun. The fact that 28,424 of us around the world (2011 Church Almanac citing data as of 1 January, 2010) are willing to do this job for no monetary compensation surely ranks as one of the strongest testimonies of the truthfulness of the restored Church in this dispensation.