This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2009, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia » One quiet day in March, Mormon humanitarian missionary Steven Himle got an urgent call.
The Ethiopian capital's giant Black Lion Hospital, which serves about 10,000 patients a day, had running water only on its first two floors. Employees were hauling water to patients and doctors languishing on the top six floors.
Within two hours, Himle and his wife, Becky -- both pipeline contractors from Redlands, Calif. -- were at the site. A week later, the LDS Church had approved money for new head works and pumps. And, soon, water was flowing throughout the hospital.
The couple and the $8,400 project were featured on Ethiopian television, a common occurrence in the Himles' first year in the drought-prone east African nation. They routinely were recognized for partnering with locals in building LDS-funded wells.
The Himles are part of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' ever-spreading global humanitarian reach. Since 1985, the Salt Lake City-based church has provided $1.1 billion in cash and goods to 167 countries. It has donated 61,000 tons of food, 12,829 tons of medical supplies, 84,681 tons of clothing and 8.6 million tons of hygiene, newborn and school-supply kits.
For example, LDS funds provided hygiene equipment and training to the Adenta Foster Home in Accra, Ghana; beds and mattresses to the Center for Reeducation of the Physically Disabled in Kinshasa, Congo; pump and training for water-system repair and maintenance in Manila, Philippines; and wheelchairs in Chengdu, China.
On average, about 80 LDS humanitarian couples are working at their own expense somewhere on the planet, managing development projects in four areas -- wheelchairs, neonatal resuscitation, vision and water.
Their instructions are clear: Find a need, get the community involved, and ensure the project can be sustained. Perhaps most important, the Mormons need to join with a local government or religious group in almost any effort.
"We'll partner with whomever it makes sense, especially different religious organizations," says Matthew Heaps, manager of the LDS clean-water initiative at church headquarters. "We love the idea of joining other faiths to combat some of these social problems."
One thing the humanitarian missionaries are not expected to do is preach.
The bulk of their attention is focused on water projects, mainly in Africa, but also in South Asia, Central America, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, Middle East, Pacific Islands and the Philippines.
And it all began on the plains of northern Ethiopia.
A vision enlarged
In 1984, an extreme drought struck the poverty-plagued African nation. More than 6 million men, women and children at risk of starvation left their homes looking for food. The Western world reacted in horror to the British Broadcasting Corp.'s televised images of malnourished and dying masses, with bloated bellies and swarming flies. Popular musicians quickly created a common hit single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to raise relief money. Within months, another prestigious group -- including Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder -- recorded "We Are the World."
Meanwhile, Mormons flooded their church headquarters with questions: "What are we doing to help?" and "What aid organizations are the most responsible with our donations?"
Glenn Pace, then head of the church's Welfare Services Department, created a standard letter, urging members to choose the charity of their choice. But Gordon B. Hinckley, then a member of the church's governing First Presidency, felt the members deserved a better response.
Hinckley came up with the idea for a churchwide, one-day fast. On Jan. 27, 1985, members would skip two meals and give the money saved to Ethiopian famine relief. The response was a "great outpouring ... which exceeded all expectations," recalls Pace, now in the church's First Quorum of the Seventy.
The tally for that one day: $6 million.
"I remember sitting in a welfare meeting where this was discussed," Pace says. "President Hinckley spoke with great emotion about the goodness of the Saints. He said they had placed a great trust in us."
Then the future church president turned directly to Pace, sitting at the end of the table, and said, pointedly, "We cannot and will not let them down, will we, Glenn?"
Pace was assigned to investigate which organizations would best use the LDS donations to reach those in need. He recommended Africare, the Red Cross, and Catholic Relief Services, all of which had the infrastructure to most quickly and effectively relieve suffering.
His proposal was accepted. He immediately left for Ethiopia with M. Russell Ballard, then a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, now an apostle. For both men, it was a sobering, never-to-be-forgotten experience.
On one of the first days, the two packed a lunch in Addis Ababa, then journeyed north. They got out of their car and planned to eat their sandwiches in an open area, where there was no sign of human life. As they opened their sacks, however, hungry children with outstretched hands seemed to appear out of nowhere. The two exchanged glances, shrugged and said in unison, "I guess we won't be eating lunch."
They tore the bread into pieces, parceling out as many morsels as they could.
Later, they walked through the camps, seared by the sight of little children carrying one another, fathers near death feeding their kids first, mothers with skin sores covering their whole bodies. One man tried to give a baby to them; others mistook them for doctors. The food lines snaked endlessly across the desert and thousands more waited outside the camps, with little hope of staying alive.
"I'd been to Haiti and many other Third World countries," Ballard recalls. "But I had never seen massive suffering like this. It changed my life forever."
Following Catholics
The LDS Church long had responded to global emergencies on an ad hoc basis, funneling food and supplies to victims caught in sporadic earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes or tsunamis. It arranged for food to be airlifted into Europe after World War II. And, since the 1920s, it had a well-developed welfare system to help church members who suffered from temporary job losses or medical conditions.
Still, the experience with Ethiopia added a new dimension to the church's outreach.
With the response to the one-day fast, LDS officials realized that members wanted to lift the burdens of all people in need, not just Mormons. And they were willing to give liberally of their time and talent to do so. So the church created a separate fund beyond tithing to tap that impulse. It now supports all kinds of assistance, including ongoing projects as well as regular disaster relief such as in the Philippines after the recent floods.
"Contributions to the Humanitarian Fund bring you to tears," Ballard says. "The members are so generous."
Looking to Catholic Relief Services as a model, Mormon leaders established Latter-day Saint Charities in 1996 as a private, nonprofit charitable agency registered in many countries. It joined InterAction, the largest alliance of U.S.-based international development and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations.
And, like its Catholic counterpart, Mormon humanitarian efforts have circled the globe and back to where they began.
This summer, LDS Charities sent Ethiopia 1.4 million pounds of Atmit, an Ethiopian porridge based on a centuries-old recipe of oat flour, powdered milk, sugar, salt, and supplemental vitamins and minerals. Atmit, produced on the church's Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, is particularly beneficial to children and the elderly who are so malnourished that they cannot digest food made with coarse flour.
The Himles, who will complete their 18-month assignment in January, are pleased with the six wells they have begun or finished, especially in rural areas decimated by acute water-based diarrhea. In each case, they hired the engineers and contractors to install the pipes, and paid for the pumps, wash basins and shower houses, while the community dug the trenches. The wells, deeper than the average, burrow down between 275 feet and 800 feet.
"Every village where we have built a well has grown by 10 to 15 percent," Becky Himle says. "People see there is water there, and they start building houses."
A lot of the villages they serve are Muslim, she says, but religion is irrelevant.
These LDS projects are based on suffering and need. These missionaries are filling bellies, not baptismal fonts.
pstack@sltrib.com" Target="_BLANK">pstack@sltrib.com
Quotes from Elder M. Russell Ballard on LDS humanitarian efforts:
"It was overwhelming to see the food lines. Little kids with a little cup stood patiently taking their turn, just to get a dip of whatever was in the big, big kettle. They'd go off and eat it. Some little boys would feed their little brothers or sisters."
"We got around by hitchhiking with air forces. The [British] Royal Air Force flew us up and the Swedish Air Force flew us back. It's the only time I've ever hitchhiked."
"To see people gathered into feeding camps and so eager for something that would sustain life, it was very touching."
"The philosophy of the church is this: We do what we can to help people help themselves, to help them find water, to provide equipment to recover the water, as well as other tools, and then [teach] them to plant potatoes and take care of a garden."
"We do a lot more in this city, more than most people in Salt Lake would even know with our inner-city missionaries, medical assistance, the support and assistance to food kitchens -- we are the largest contributor to the Food Bank. This outreach starts right here in Salt Lake City and the state of Utah and goes out to the world from there."