Church Delivers Truckload of Food to NYC Food Bank

Downloadable B-roll & SOTs

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently joined with New York-based Christian Cultural Center to feed struggling families.

On Friday, March 4, a truckload with nearly 40,000 pounds of food from the Bishops’ Central Storehouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, arrived at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York, where Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presented the donation.

Elder Cook was accompanied by his wife Mary; Elder Paul V. Johnson of the Presidency of the Seventy; Elder Randall K. Bennett, president of the North America Northeast Area; and Elder David A. Buckner, Area Seventy in the New York area.

The Christian Cultural Center is a nondenominational church with more than 30,000 members. Its outreach efforts include two food pantries.

“There’s a wonderful relationship between the Church and Reverend Bernard,” Elder Cook said of the megachurch’s founder and senior pastor, A.R. Bernard who is also president of the Commission of Religious Leaders in New York City (CORL).

During the visit, Elder Cook invited the Rev. Bernard to visit the Church’s Welfare Square in Salt Lake City and attend the upcoming open house for the Washington D.C. Temple.

“This makes us brothers and sisters ... jointly engaged in trying to help others,” Elder Cook said.

“It’s about giving people value, respecting the life and dignity of the human person created in the image of God. And we want to partner with people who get that, who understand that,” the Rev. Bernard said.

The two faiths first connected in 2020, when the Church delivered food to more than 200 food pantries in New York to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Friday’s donation is the  second delivery, according to the Rev. Bernard’s daughter-in-law, Annette Bernard. She is executive director for the outreach ministry of the Christian Cultural Center.

Friday’s delivery included staples like rice, beans, beef stew, and canned fruits and vegetables for the food pantry in Brooklyn and its satellite location in Long Island.

“Each week we’re serving — that number fluctuates a little bit — but we’re [serving] about 750 [people] in the Brooklyn location. We also have a Long Island location, and we’re about 500 to 550 [people] there,” Annette Bernard said.

Annette Bernard says the pantries are operated by volunteers, including full-time missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ.

“We are looking forward to this long-lasting relationship. It has worked so well from the very beginning,” Annette Bernard said, “Our ultimate goal is the same. That’s a love language that we don’t even need to speak, and our spirits are just meshed.”

The pantries are open on Wednesday and Thursday. Families receive essential groceries, including fresh produce and meat.

“I’m more interested in giving people what they can’t see and feeding the soul,” Annette Bernard said. “It’s not easy to stand in a pantry line.”