LDS Church donates over 31,000 pounds of food to local food banks

POCATELLO — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has donated a large amount of food to local food banks and other organizations in the community to help those in need.

Sherri Matson, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints communications director, said the food banks in the area are struggling to keep food on their shelves. The church wanted to help them get more food.

“The pantries are bare, the shelves are bare,” she said. “We submitted a request to Salt Lake and they sent a semi full of food.”

The food will be distributed between thirteen different agencies throughout the area. Two are located in Fort Hall and one is in American Falls. The others are in Pocatello. A few of the organizations include Benny’s Pantry, Aid for Friends and Idaho Foodbank.

“Others include Valley Mission, Gate City Christian Church and the (Pocatello/Chubbuck) School District,” Matson said. “We are working with the community resource workers at School District 25. That will help them out immensely.”

Matson said it felt remarkable to be able to gather this amount of food for these organizations and for people in need. She said the church is happy to help support people in times of need.

“This is remarkable to be able to show love and to be able to support them in their time of need and to be able to support them in the responsibilities they have in the community,” she said.

Matson said this is the first time the local church has done something like this in a long time.

“This is the first opportunity that we’ve had to be able to share this with the community,” she said.

Matson hopes this will be something the church will continue to be able to do for the community in the future.

“I hope so,” she said. “I hope we’ll still have the opportunity.”

The church donated over 31,000 pounds of food to the community. This amount took up 21 pallets and involved 13,000 cases of food. The load also included laundry soap and dish soap.

“The rest was beef stew, cream of chicken, applesauce, diced tomatoes, peanut butter and flour,” she said. “We had 17 different commodities.”

The truck with the food arrived at Deseret Industries at about 9 a.m. on Wednesday, June 26. Volunteers from the church arrived to load it into the trucks going to the food banks around 12:30 p.m.

“We have about 40 youth volunteers helping us here at this location, and we have youth volunteers helping the individual organizations to help them unload,” Matson said.

Matson expressed gratitude for everyone who helped with the food and made this donation possible.

“We’re grateful for the youth coming out and supporting us and for the organizations and the good work that they do in our community,” she said.