A few weeks ago the church donated 39,000 pounds of nonperishable items including pasta, sugar, flour, vegetable and soup to Harvesters - The Community Food Network. The $44,000 worth of food and supplies was delivered in a semi-truck and was one of the largest donations Harvesters has ever received.
The church provides many services and programs for the community including JustServe.org, whose mission is to provide opportunities to relieve suffering, care for the poor and needy and to enhance the quality of life in the community. The program is not for proselytizing or publicity, it’s a free service to help link community needs and projects with volunteers, since often there are opportunities to help but they are missed because no one knows about them. It’s non-profit and non-political.
Church members believe JustServe benefits both the community and volunteers through their service and people of all faiths are encouraged to volunteer.
Volunteers are free to choose the type of service they are interested in and they can choose the distance they prefer to travel and what specific skills they have and can utilize. They can decide if they want to work with people, youth or animals and whether they want daily or weekly notifications when they are matched with a non-profit.
Ryan White, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - Platte City Stake said the JustServe organization allows organizations and volunteers to meet together on an internet site where organizations offer opportunities for volunteers to help with.
“Recently someone from the church went on the JustServe site and found out there was a need in Platte Woods so she went down and she helped put baskets together for the homeless,” said White. “From the Interfaith standpoint we are really trying to get other partners in the community, the county and elsewhere to submit service opportunities that they have. We were doing a cleanup project recently at English Landing Park so if somebody wants the opportunity to push mulch around for a few hours they can do that. One of the opportunities was a pet service where people would just come and hug the animals in the shelter.”
The church offers many opportunities for community members of all faiths to come together for events such as their nativity festival which draws hundreds of people.
They sponsor a temple run in the spring where people of all faiths can participate in a 5K run with their children.
“They can walk, they can run or they can jog,” White said. “There are some famous members of our church that will come to the run, some play for the Kansas City Chiefs. They come and give autographs. Andy Reid, the coach of the Chiefs, is a member of our church. Chiefs’ player Dan Sorensen is also a member.”
One of the church’s popular yearly events has been breaking the fast during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan with a dinner at the Platte City church in coordination with the Dialogue Institute of Kansas City. Due to the recent lockdown the church was unable to host the event recently, but they did offer a virtual Ramadan dinner.
“We certainly want to continue our partnership with the Muslim community, we feel like that’s very important,” White said. “It’s a great example of taking two very different faiths and trying to find commonality in what we do and how we serve others. We find that we have much more in common than we would expect. I think if we brought the things we have in common to light there would be a lot more peace and love.”