When we go out and tell people would you like to come and make peanut butter to help bless the lives of other people, they'll go who's making peanut butter? You don't make peanut butter here. On the north side of Houston, you just come to our little peanut butter factory and you just see what is going on.

The fact that we still have hunger in a country like the United States is amazing by itself. I mean we hear about it around the world that there is hunger, but you actually don't think about that people may be suffering from hunger in Houston, for instance. The people that go to the peanut butter factory are just completely amazed. First I think of how small the operation is, and what it can produce. I had no idea that the Mormon Church had a peanut butter factory here or anywhere. The Church utilizes this facility 30 or 40 days a year. And so that means that the other 10, 11 months of the year the factory remains relatively dormant. That's why the Church entered into the partnership with the Houston Food Bank. The Church provides the facility. The food bank provides the funding for the peanuts. But someone has to go in and get on the production line and make the peanut butter. And that's where the corporate volunteers come in.

If you think about what Houston Food Bank does, we distribute food to families in need. And what we're looking for is shelf stable as much as possible, high nutritional value, and the thing that helps us the most is the products that the family would otherwise have difficulty paying for. When you put those things together, peanut butter is actually the perfect product. Peanut butter is one of the foods that the food bank never has enough of. As soon as it comes in, it seems like it's gone again. It's one of the most popular foods with children and families. And that's the majority of who we serve. We get right at 100,000 jars of peanut butter each year from this peanut butter project. Our volunteers love this project because they said of all the things that they do, when they come to the end of their four-hour shift, they can see five pallets of peanut butter. All of the men and women who volunteer their time have a great sense of satisfaction when they leave here that they've been able to volunteer a few hours of their time to feed people. And that's huge. I appreciate what the Church does, the Mormon Church. I really do. I appreciate every individual who's associated with this cannery and providing me with the opportunity to do this. And it is a joy. The real satisfaction, the real enjoyment of it being able to help somebody that you don't necessarily know. You're not expecting to get anything back from that person. It makes you really feel good about being human and living on the earth and helping one another. Because I think that's what it's all about. You just know that there's need out there, very basic need. And when you can help fill that need, it's a special feeling. We couldn't do what we do here at the Houston Food Bank without the Mormon Church and this peanut butter cannery project. It's been a blessing to be a part of. This church does a wonderful job of feeding people, both in its own house and in the community at large. And that's appreciated not just by the people who they're feeding, but by the the people who volunteer to work here. We all have gifts. We all have skills, and we all have abilities that we bring to the table. And the LDS Church with its orientation towards family, its orientation towards volunteering, and then this resource it's absolutely amazing the impact that that's having on the community. And we're so grateful to the LDS Church for stepping up to do this. I sincerely hope that people know that they live among people who have big hearts, people who want to help, people who understand the problems that their brothers and sisters go through. And don't have the feeling that they're alone, that they don't have any resources to help feed their family. I mean this church does a wonderful job of feeding people both in its own house and in the community at large.