Volunteering at the Church Cannery

VOLUNTEERING AT THE CHURCH CANNERIES
Today I volunteered to work at the Church Cannery. We were working on canning chili. There were three women and one man from our designated area of town. We all came from different areas, totaling about 15-20 volunteers.

There are many different areas where we could be assigned. For instance, you could put together boxes and place them on the track, watch the cans come through the line and make sure they didn’t catch on anything, look for flaws in the can itself, work the label machine, participate in the boxing of the cans, lifting the filled boxes onto a palate and so on. But my friends and I got the auspicious job of placing 2010 labels on 2009 Peas and Corn boxes.

　

The brother who took our photos was terrific. I wish I got his name.

There were palates upon palates of boxes with the year 2009 on them. Since this is 2010, there needed to be a new label put over the old 2009 on the boxes. The church believes in waste not want not, use it up, repair it, make do. So for about 3 of my 4 hours I put sticky 2010 labels on the old 2009 boxes. We put new labels on nearly 4000 boxes.

Not that I didn’t just love putting 2010 labels over the 2009 on the boxes, but it did become somewhat redundant after 2 hours. I occasionally looked around the room at what others were doing. Roberta was working on the boxes and I saw that frequently she was just standing there. That looked like a pretty good job to me, at least something different anyway. Finally, I went over to Roberta and asked if I could trade with her. This was not something unknown there, trading. I had seen some trading of jobs going on already. Roberta was so wonderful to let me work at her job. She gave me some training and I was off and boxing.

Well, it wasn’t as easy as it looked. I got boxes upside down, and not sealed on the bottom and the line backed up and, and , and. The permanent workers were so nice to me. Apparently Roberta was just so efficient that it looked easy and it looked like she was just standing around. After working on the boxes for probably ½ hour, one of the permanent workers let me trade with Linda and I got to go back to labeling the boxes again.

I had such a good time. The professional folks at the cannery were great. They were informative, inclusive, fun and efficient. There were also missionaries who came. I especially loved watching the missionary sisters run the fork lift. That is a job I’d love. But the best thing about the cannery is knowing that you are helping people all over the world. There is such a need for humanitarian aid now, and it gives me such a good feeling knowing that I’m doing something that will make a difference.

I’ve worked at Church Canneries since I was in my teens. When I was just a new member of the church, I canned tuna in the old San Diego Cannery downtown. We could always tell in San Diego when the tuna fleet was in. You could smell fish all the way to my home in El Cajon, 40 miles away. The old cannery had wood tables the fish would be placed on, for us to cut them up, pull out the bones and other entrails and prepare them for cans. The cans ran down the center between two long wooden tables. We stuffed cleaned up tuna in the cans.

At some point the church built a new tuna cannery in San Diego. My mother was an inspector in that cannery, because of her college education in kitchen procedures. One of the men at this cannery told me that the San Diego Cannery is no longer there. He said the church tore it down. I have such good memories of the volunteer time I had there.

I have worked in church welfare farms and canneries in California, Washington, Arizona and now here in Utah. I remember having helped in canning tuna, corn, beef, jam, soup and now chili. I’ve also helped in the dry pack canning of carrots, rice, oatmeal, milk and so on.

The welfare program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is huge and provides shelter, food, jobs, education and many other services. I’m so happy to be able to help the people of the world in this way. Where else could someone go for a few hours as they can, that would have such far reaching influence?

Here are some links to interesting websites:

Link to the church's provident living site:

Visit the new Latter-day Saint Charities Web site to learn about LDS Church relief efforts in Haiti. To make a donation to worldwide relief efforts.
Haiti Relief Efforts

Go to the Humanitarian Services Emergency Response donation form.
Humanitarian Services Emergency Response

Sensitivity Training

SENSITIVITY TRAINING

Years ago, about 1968, I was living on state welfare. I hated it and wanted to support myself and my boys. I didn’t have any training in anything useful. I had been a telephone operator but those jobs were few and far between in San Diego. I worked in Prove as a telephone operator. They hired lots of wives as operators each year. San Diego wasn’t like that. I’m not a person that can just learn on the job so I was very miserable. And the welfare person over my case didn’t want me to work. He said I should be home with my children. Yes, I wanted that too. But I felt so worthless living off welfare. And people made fun of me at drug and grocery stores when they saw my food stamps. I was humiliated.

I asked the person over my case if I could have some help with an education so I could get off welfare. He reluctantly said there was some help available. I researched many occupations and schools. So many jobs took 4 years. Then I found a Dental Assistant school which only took 3 months and applied for admission. I was accepted by the school and the state was willing to help me with the tuition. Oh, happy day. I could get an education and go to work in 3 months. But first I had to take a Sensitivity Training class.

This was a big thing in the 60s. Very new and cutting edge training to learn to get along with your fellow workers. I attended the class in downtown San Diego somewhere. I can’t remember. There were 5 women and 5 men. We had to UNDERSTAND what another person was telling us. We had to read their body language and look into their eyes and really UNDERSTAND them. I thought this was nuts. It was obvious that everyone was hiding their true feelings. And some of the guys were always trying to read into what the women were saying. Some men made everything sexual. It was creepy. Eventually it was banned. But I got through it and went to my dental assistant class.

I did very well in the class. I had the highest grades and was quite popular with the other students and the teacher. This upset the administration. When they interviewed me they made it abundantly clear that I was going to be watched and if I made one wrong move, I would be kicked out. Sheesh!

The class elected me to give the graduation speech, which was very upsetting to the administration. They tried to stop my participation but I called the person over my case and he put a halt to that. I graduated and got a job.

That was Sensitivity Training of the 60s. Really creepy. Not one of the facilitators was trained in any way. Some of the women had a difficult time “opening up.” And then it turned out they had been molested. Boy that was scary to have that come up with a facilitator who didn’t know what they were doing.


ME AND GAIL AND SENSITIVITY TRAINING

When I was in Mesa AZ I was having a difficult time with some folks in church. I had to work with them and was in a somewhat supervisory position. They always seemed to put me in a situation where I had to tell them they couldn’t do something according to the church policies. This made me very nervous because they kept telling me what they were going to do, like take all the young women to Las Vegas. For what? For a T-shirt convention. Hmm. No, unless they wanted to do it on their own insurance as the church insurance wouldn’t cover the trip, according to the bishop. Oh, they were mad.

I complained a lot to my friend Gail and she was getting very tired of my complaining. One day she said; “No offense taken, no offense given!” I said; “What?” And Gail repeated it. I had to write it down. It took me a bit to really understand what it meant, but when I did get it I made it my own. I love that saying. Sometimes the natural man in me reacts but I do try to live by that motto as much as I can.

Does it mean I can’t be “right” ever? Well, to me it means that “right” probably doesn’t matter really. I still had to make sure the young women didn’t go on trips or to events that were not appropriate on the church’s dime. But it meant that I didn’t have to get upset at the other leaders when they gave me a bad time. It was their problem. I do not have to get upset no matter what.


CUBS AND SENSITIVITY TRAINING

My next association with sensitivity training was in Mesa AZ. Merlin and I were teaching Cub Scouts. We had a bunch of great Cubs. One of them was not a member of the Church. I had always had non-members in my Church Packs. It made the Packs so much better and the parents were great. We had a Navy Chaplin, a truck driver, and others. Lots of great folks.

Sometimes the kids who didn’t have church experience were a little bit edgy and rough. This included the LDS kids who didn’t have much experience with church. But the Cub program really was wonderful and things usually worked out.

This one time however, the boys were roughhousing and teasing at school and the church boys were forming a bit of a coalition against the one non-member. The non-member finally had had enough and told one of the boys that his mother was fat. This apparently was the worst thing that any of them could think of. The church boy vowed to never go to Cub Scouts again if that other boy was there, who said his mother was fat. His mother wasn't fat, but I don’t think that was really the issue. All the boys were in an uproar.

Both sets of parents called me complaining about each offending boy. There was certainly a case for each side. But who was right and who was wrong wasn’t really the problem. Learning to get along when things don’t go the way we want was the problem.

I called each offending boy and parents and asked them to come to the next Den Meeting. I then asked the dad with the fat wife (just kidding) to talk at the meeting about how we should try to get along with one another. He was a policeman and I knew he had to take sensitive training (not like mine I hope) so I thought he would be sensitive to everyone’s feelings.

The boys were great. They listened with great attention to the policeman dad’s talking about how we should watch what we say and how we say it. We should be considerate of everyone’s feelings.

Then I thanked him and reiterated what he said and supported the importance of always trying to be kind and helpful to folks.

Then I also talked about how we should not always take offense at what people say. We do not have to react to everything. We have choice. We can get upset at what people say or do or we can ignore it. Bad behavior does not have to affect us or our behavior or attitudes. We do not have to be “right.” We can look at the bigger picture, such as why should I take offense and ruin my fun at Cub Scouts? Or how will my taking offense affect my family and my friends? And we don't have to proliferate the commotion by enlisting others in support of our side of the situation.

I then put it to the officer dad and asked him what he thought of trying to be less easily offended. He agreed and went on to elaborate on that point.

We had a great meeting and everyone felt much better after my little Sensitivity Training with dads and Cubs.

BEYOND SENSITIVITY TRAINING

Of course there are some things that are just Beyond the Pale, and our feelings are deeply hurt and raw. I love the saying Beyond the Pale. The Pale was an area delineated by fences in English Ireland in the 1400s, near Dublin. Living Beyond the Pale was living in uncivilized society. Offenses that are Beyond the Pale are the times that prayer and fasting is of help to me, and time. One of our daughter’s in law said she doesn’t want any empty seats. I’m am quite impressed with that. I think I will make it my own too.

“No offense taken, no offense given.”
“No empty seats.”

HOW I MISSED OUT WEARING THE DUNCE CAP IN SECOND GRADE

As a young child, I was sick a lot and missed so much school. It made me feel like a new student whenever I came back to class. It felt like I had to fit in anew. In second grade I was back in class after a two week absence. I always tried to look around to see if there were any changes in the room or sitting arrangements. This time I noticed a new stool at the front of the room with a cheerful yellow pointed hat sitting on it.

We were working at our desks on a reading assignment when the teacher asked for our attention. As I looked up from my desk, there was Tommy sitting on the nice stool wearing the colorful cap. I thought that this was surely some honor to be sitting up in the front of the room wearing that pretty cap. Perhaps Tommy was being honored for his reading ability. I thought; “I can read well.” Then she asked if anyone else wanted to sit there and wear the cap. I raised my hand. When she saw me she said; “Oh Anitra! Put down your hand. You don’t want to be sitting there! It‘s the dunces stool!” Then I realized it wasn’t an honor to be there and she wasn’t really asking for volunteers.

I didn’t know what a dunce was until that day. I learned it was a good idea to just keep a low profile after coming back from a long absence. It would also be better to listen and observe before making a comment. I was momentarily embarrassed, but I thought that since I hadn’t been there when the dunce chair/hat was explained, I could forget my awkwardness. No one teased me about my blunder.