Always With the Hope of Helping People to Help Themselves

One of the first humanitarian projects we got involved in was a shelter for abused women. The domestic violence laws in Slovakia are very different from the USA, and women may need to leave their home for safety. We were told there are no government funded shelters for abused women.

We learned an older woman became a widow and had a large house. She decided to convert it into a woman's shelter for victims of domestic abuse. Several rooms were turned into bedrooms and small playground was inside the locked fenced yard. The kitchen was provided by LDS Charities which included a double oven and stove and a much larger refrigerator. A new kitchen allows the women to fix meals for their children and provides enough room for many to sit at the new table. 

At closing of this project, the elderly woman took several of us to lunch. She invited a city manager and two city police officers. Greg tried to converse with the officers and learned the older one had retired from another job and was now working for the city police department. He noticed they drove a small Skoda compact vehicles with "Policia" on the side.

The city manager was very impressed by the kitchen upgrade and LDS Charities providing all this help. After lunch, he asked some questions about our church and why we are helping in this way. Our Branch President speaks very good Slovak, and he was able to explain many things about the LDS church including humanitarian missionaries. An explanation was also given him about the Joseph Smith vision of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. The city manager shared that he would like to one day be able to serve people for a good cause like we were doing. Through a translator Greg told him he is serving the people as a city manager and that is a very good thing.

This is a good example of the types of projects LDS Charities will become involved with. Always with the hope of helping people to help themselves. If these mothers are able to provide meals for their children they will feel better about themselves, and they are being self-reliant considering their circumstances. 

We have several projects in the works so we will share some of those in the weeks to follow.