Good works » For many worshippers, helping Utah’s unemployed is a spiritual mandate.
Larry Adakai was out of options.
He lost his welder job after taking too much time off to care for his ailing wife through numerous surgeries. The Navajo father had no savings and few places to turn.
That’s when the Rev. Steve Keplinger and the good folks at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Page, Ariz., part of the Utah diocese, stepped in.
They offered him handyman work around the church and prepared dinners for the family. They paid his union dues so he could be hired at a nearby site. They faxed his application to the new company, then gave him gas money to go there and take the necessary welder exams.
It took six months, but now Larry Adakai has the job, Mary Ann Adakai is fully recovered, and their 14-year-old son, Marcus, is feeling good about life.
Today’s economic realities are prompting more and more workers like the Adakais to turn to their religious communities for encouragement, advice, contacts, training, financial aid, spiritual solace and, frankly, jobs.
More than 90,000 Utahns are out of work, up nearly 20 percent from a year ago, as the state’s unemployment rate jumped to 6.8 percent in January. Executives, students, hairstylists, truck drivers, builders, Realtors, people in every profession and at every level face an unknown future, many for the first time.
“We used to place 300 people a month,” says Ballard Veater, manager of LDS Employment Services, who has worked for the church since 1978. “Now it’s half that many.”
When a person loses work, it’s like a death in the family where the one who died is you, Veater says. A job is at the core of who we are.
For many people of faith, helping the unemployed is more than a kindhearted gesture. It’s a spiritual mandate.
“When I was scared, they talked to me,” says Mary Ann Adakai of St. David’s leaders. “When I lost all hope, they helped me with prayers.” Indeed, such assistance is the centerpiece of Keplinger’s theology.
“Trying to help people get back on their feet is the most Christ-centered thing we can do,” he says. “It is more important than worship.”
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Joining religious forces
Sunday was hardly a sabbath, an unemployed Presbyterian woman told Anne Gardner last fall, because of the stress of not knowing what Monday would bring.
That comment prompted Gardner, a business executive, to launch the Park City Career Network, with a handful of faith leaders.
Gardner, a Catholic, invited Ellen Silver, the director of Jewish Family Services; Bill Humbert, an executive recruiter and a member of St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Parish; and Dale M. Matthews, a career coach and Greek Orthodox, to join her in a weekly workshop at Temple Har Shalom in Park City. Among other benefits, the effort helps job-hungry seekers define “The Brand Called You.”
The group offers people of all faiths free training similar to the LDS approach. It also provides monthly speakers, who might address such topics as debt negotiations, retirement planning and the emotional stress of job searching.
The typical job seekers are in their early to mid-40s, with either college or graduate education, working at a management level or above. They are not used to having to look for a job. The weekly meetings, begun last fall, attract about 15 people; 21 “graduates” have found jobs and another nine have started their own businesses through this effort.
“We encourage people to reach out in the community, to be active in the community, and make sure you continue your routines,” Gardner says. “We tell them to have faith in whatever their guiding principles are.”…
Kalabokes said St. Francis National Catholic Church is a very small parish of mostly fixed income people.