Church Donates 40,000 Pounds of Food to Colorado Towns

One tractor-trailer carrying enough food to feed 1,400 people for a week backed into the Durango Food Bank's loading dock last Wednesday. The delivery was part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' America 250 initiative, which aims to fill 250 food banks nationwide with donated groceries.

The money funding these trucks came from a simple practice: church members voluntarily fast for 24 hours once a month, then donate what they would have spent on those meals. "The whole point of these trucks is to promote volunteerism, to help encourage people to get out and volunteer," said Lamoni Sam, the church's welfare and self-reliance manager.

The timing couldn't be better for Durango Food Bank executive director Sarah Smith. She explained that most donations they receive are lower-quality items, but this truck arrived packed with higher-cost necessities like pasta sauce, baking mixes, and dish soap. To put the scale in perspective, a typical full-day food drive brings in 12,000 to 15,000 pounds of food.

The food won't stay in one place. Half the donation will travel to Our Community Eats in Pagosa Springs, with additional shares going to the Fort Lewis College Grub Hub and Silverton Food Pantry across La Plata, San Juan, and Archuleta counties.

The Ripple Effect

Twenty-five volunteers signed up through Just Serve, a church-run platform connecting people with service opportunities, to help unload and prepare the food for distribution. The Durango Food Bank's new 3,000-square-foot warehouse on a five-acre property was built specifically to handle deliveries of this size and serve as a regional hub for smaller pantries without storage space.

Moss Fenberg, president of the Durango Stake of the LDS church and an eye surgeon, sees this work as essential community care. He treats unhoused patients without charge because everyone deserves vision care, but food access requires a different solution. "You don't just get to go to your restaurant and say, 'I need this food because I'm hungry,'" he explained.

The warehouse represents phase one of a larger vision. Future plans include an administration building, community garden, and even chickens that will eat unusable food products, creating a sustainable cycle of food production and distribution across five Southwest Colorado counties.

"It's a huge honor that we were selected," Smith said of being chosen as one of 250 recipients nationwide.