Humanitarian Service –

I’ve already written a story on Community Service – as I have donated a half a billion hours to a number of organizations. These are great and might get you listed on a program or plaque. Humanitarian Service is different in my eyes; this is when you do something directly to help someone else in need or who is less fortunate. This doesn’t make you noble or better than others, but it sure makes you feel good if you do it for the right reason and with a pure heart. There are a number of ways to do this; sometimes it’s by giving financial assistance to curtain organization that span the world looking for disasters and those needing assistance. For many years we have given such donations almost on a monthly basis. But these can also be done in every location in the world and especially where you are. I also love it when I’m able to do it anonymously. This isn’t the view of all philanthropists, we live in a small University town and half of the buildings on campus have the same name on it. Now I’m glad that they are willing to give to higher education and if I had that much money maybe I would do the same thing. One billionaire also donated for a building and named it after his father-in-law that didn’t have much money. My first anonymous humanitarian service wasn’t even my idea. My father knew of a family whose circumstances were desperate, so he bought a couple of bags of groceries and asked me to go with him to deliver them. Because he didn’t want them to know who did it, he asked me to take them to the door and ring the doorbell and run away. He said I was much faster and he would get caught. Now I had doorbell ditched before and now my father was telling me it was OK. In one of the bags was a large ham – I loved ham and when we got home the dinner mom made didn’t look as nice as that ham did. It took me a number of years to understand that my father was fast enough to get away and I was there for more that just my speed. I wish I could say I do this kind of service on a daily basis, but I don’t. I think all of us could do it more often. When I do it, it’s usually a small event that is only known by myself and those with whom it serves. This past year I was involved in an event that wasn’t small and was known by thousand of people. I’m a member of our stake presidency - this is a group of people that oversee a number of congregations within our church. In this stake we have approximately four hundred young men and women from the age twelve to eighteen. Every other year we have a youth conference where they all get together to sing, dance, play and hear some motivational speakers. Normally we go to another location so we have their undivided attention. A couple of years ago we decided to do something different – lets give them a chance to work their tails off. Now how do you get four hundred kids to be excited about working hard for a few days? 1^st – you need to have tons of food. Young men will do just about anything if they think they’re going to get a lot of food. The girls will come if they think the boy’s will be there. These are secondary reasons the main one is to let them know we’re going to help people that can’t do it for them. If we can help others, have fun and have a lot to eat – what great lessons they would learn. Part of our stake is in an older part of town where there are a number of disabled, widows, and single parent homes that need fixing up, painting, and cleaning up - basically doing something for someone who couldn’t do it for themselves. We wanted it to be done right so we convinced thirty contractor, professionals and knowledgeable individuals to over see each project. Our greatest challenge was to finance the project. It was my assignment to figure that out, it ended up being easier than you might have thought. After a few phone calls and personal appointments we had secured money from our churches humanitarian division, from individual members of our stake and also from Logan City. Apparently there are federal funds to fix up low income housing, as long as we met curtain criteria these funds are available. Why wouldn’t they want to donate – we match their funds with more of our own and then we provide all the labor and expertise. In all we spend sixty thousand dollars and donated six thousand five hundred hours of service. We worked on more than thirty different projects. We served by providing new roofs, sprinkler systems, painted houses, landscaping, new driveways and much more. Each family we served received a new quilt. A couple of months after the project I had the opportunity to go to one of the houses to talk to the recipients, they were so excited for the service that was rendered. He talked about the kids and how excited they were to be there. He said; “here we’re the ones needing the assistance and they are thanking us for the opportunity to work on our house.” When things needed to be done that we were unable to do, professionals were hired to make sure it was done right. Many of the workers after they knew what we were doing refused to accept payment for their services and others gave us a discount. As projects were being finished the kids wanted to go to the other projects to help them rather that to go home. Yes we still had firesides, motivational speakers, a dance and lots of food. But the greatest reward came from the faces of both the recipients and the kids as they helped others, those that couldn’t do it for themselves.