Missionary Helping Hands

A woman in Melissa's Connecticut ward who has a Public Affairs calling, wrote an article about the clean-up efforts of the missionaries in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  She was kind enough to let Melissa send it to us, and gave us permission to put it up on her blog.  The photo at the bottom was also  part of the article.

200 Missionaries as Helping Hands

               Hurricane Sandy Cleanup along Connecticut’s Shoreline – Week Two (10 Nov. 2012) 

(Submitted by Lyn Greenwood, Tri-Stake P.A Assistant Director)  

On Friday, 9 November 2012,  200 missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons, or LDS) began a service mission to cleanup neighborhoods along Connecticut’s coastline that were devastated by Hurricane Sandy and exacerbated by the Nor’easter ice and snow storms of 8 Nov., just a week after Sandy hit. 

The missionaries drove from all over Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut to the New England sea village of Madison, CT.  They brought sleeping bags, toiletries and their work gear for the next day.  After a mission-wide conference with leaders, the young men stayed over night in the gym of the local LDS church building.  Senior missionaries and twenty-eight sister missionaries were housed in the homes of local congregants. 

At 6:30 the next morning, wearing their Helping Hands vests and T-shirts, they were all ready to eat the breakfast prepared by congregants.   In addition to the name tags known worldwide, the vests featured a small white sticker designating a group in which they would later be serving.  They blessed the food and the hands that prepared it, and sang a hymn.  More than 200 voices sang out:  “As I have loved you, love one another.  This new commandment:  Love one another.  By this shall men know, ye are my disciples, if ye have love, one to another.” Then they waited patiently in line for their breakfast.  Over and over again these young people thanked locals for their hot meal. 

After clearing up tables and chairs, the missionaries piled into cars and headed out for Trumbull, CT. to join 200 local LDS congregants who also helped, for a second weekend, as Mormon Helping Hand volunteers.   From there, the 400+ volunteers received work assignments in Fairfield, Milford, or Bridgeport shoreline neighborhoods.  Local LDS Helping Hands continued to work, for the second weekend in a row, in Madison and Killingworth, CT, as well.  An early estimate of just Saturday’s help is that over 3,000 hours of aid was volunteered on Nov. 10 alone.

Guiding this large group of missionaries was Boston Mission President Packard, attending with his wife, Sister Alison Packard, and 3 of their children – all of whom have moved to the Boston area for three years.   (Their oldest child is serving a mission of his own in northern Chile.)  Pres. Packard noted that with LDS Church President Monson’s new age guidelines for serving missions, there has been an almost 5-fold explosion in the number of young LDS men and women applying for missions.  This means that mission presidents all over the world, he said, will be more and more looking for ways that their young missionaries can find meaningful community service opportunities of their own, and with other faith groups, and organizations.  He added:  “They come out in what typically is the most selfish time of their lives, and they give all that up, pay their own way, and serve not for 2 weeks or 2 months but for 18 months to two years.  It’s a beautiful thing.”  His own children are in Boston area high schools and middle school and finished homework up early in order to participate with the group today.  “They love it.  They do not want to miss one minute of being here with these Elders and Sisters.  They just buoy us up.” 

Missionaries serve in pairs.  The two missionaries currently assigned to the Madison ward (or parish) and its 17 towns are young women (“sisters”):  Sister Broekhuijsen, of Highland, Utah, and Sister Vicente, of Cape Verde, Africa, have served two weekends in a row to cleanup Hurricane Sandy destruction.  On Nov. 3, they worked in Old Saybrook and went on to Milford, Connecticut.  On Nov. 10 and 11, they worked with a larger team at one house in Fairfield.   

Each shared their thoughts on Nov. 11:  Sister Vicente, who has so far served 4 months of her 18-month mission, said that nothing can match the wonderful feeling that comes from the chance to be just a little bit like Christ in helping people who are waiting in a setting where everyone all around needs so much: “their happy faces, their gratitude – this is all so rewarding.”  There’s so much devastation that it would take one family months to accomplish what can be done in a few days with many hands.

Sister Broekhuijsen, a missionary for 15 months so far, pointed out that the neighborhoods where the two had worked already had a great sense of community and the Mormon Helping Hands just added to that.  For instance, one local citizen saw all the workers in yellow vests and came to see what was being done, asked if she could help, went home and changed clothes, and came to work the rest of the day with the Helping Hands group.  Another neighbor baked a cake and brought it to the young people.   
“From a missionary perspective,” adds Sister Broekhuijsen, “it was very interesting to see that people are so willing to accept this kind of help because, as full-time missionaries we know that what we share when we teach and preach the gospel is more valuable than physical help.  But people aren’t always able to accept that spiritual help.  So it’s very rewarding to share something that people are willing to accept and are appreciative of.”  Both sisters agreed joyfully that this weekend of service was “the best weekend of our missions.”