The Church and Hurricane Sandy

I love to be a member of a Church that is so organized and quick to help those in need. On Wednesday night we received an email from our Stake President that the local Bishops Storehouse was looking for around 15-20 volunteers between the stakes here in Indy. There were four shifts 8-noon, noon-4pm, and 4pm-8pm. It was short notice and during the work day so they were asking for all those that could help to please help. I arrived at 7:45am on Thursday. I was one of the first there and so I was able to gather alot of info of what was going on. On Wed. afternoon the Church had received word that there were 1,500 families that needed help in Northern New Jersey (there were a lot more in other areas as well, but this one was assigned to the Indy area). The Church shipped 1,500 boxes from SLC to the Indy Storehouse and needed help on Thursday to fill and pack them so they could go out by Friday. The individuals in charge of the Storehouse were a little worried about filling everything on Thursday alone. They explained that they wanted me to run picking the boxes off the carts, taping the boxes, and stacking them on pallets. I knew it was going to be a long day. Then around 8:00am people started showing up and more and more people kept coming. The boxes from Utah were late and so people were standing around waiting. There was no complaining or murmuring from anyone. Finally the boxes arrived about 10:00, which was two hours late. Immediately everyone sprung into action. An assembly line was formed and each box contained 2 cans of spaghetti sauce, spaghetti, cereal, tuna fish, jam, peanut butter, stew, chili, fruit drink, etc. It was a box for each family to eat for a couple of days. To see all this food the Church had prepared for us to pack and send was amazing. But, the amazing part of the day was that the 15-20 needed for the shift turned into well over 100+ people. The job I was originally assigned to do turned into 3 people taking boxes off the carts, 6 people taping, and 6-8 people loading them on pallets. The Church had planned on one person for the job and it turned into 17. Each section was just the same. We were all excited to work and help. In less than 3 hours the boxes were filled and loaded and one of the trucks was leaving and they were loading the other one. The truck was able to leave Thursday afternoon instead of Friday morning. As I was leaving, it was a neat experience to hear everyone talk about wanting to help more. I saw people there that were doctors, lawyers, moms, youth, teachers, etc. Everyone had dropped everything after finding out on Wed. night that they could help. The second shift showed up and helped finish and clean up, but most of the first shift people didn't even leave. The Storehouse emailed everyone on the third shift and told them to not even come. It was so successful and so many people wanted to help, that they requested to Salt Lake to allow us to help more. We were just informed that next week, we will be able to do another truck load of supplies that are needed. All of these people had plans, but they dropped them with short notice just to help our brothers and sisters that were affected by Hurricane Sandy. It was an experience I will never forget. This is a picture that I took of the first truck before it took off. We did just over 27 pallets with 54 boxes on each pallet, and all in less than 3 hours.