DATE: Friday, July 18, 1997                 TAG: 9707180659

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SHILOH                            LENGTH:   70 lines

AREA MORMONS SHARE WORLDWIDE EFFORT 20,000 CONGREGATIONS WILL BE DOING SERVICE PROJECTS SATURDAY.

When volunteer crews from a local church put siding on a historic building here Saturday, they will join 20,000 congregations from all over the world doing similar service projects.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Camden, N.C., to the Philippines are celebrating the church's exodus west 150 years ago with service projects in their respective communities. There will be 3 million hours of service worldwide Saturday, according to the church's headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah.

``The true badge of a Christian is to serve others,'' said Frank T. Yoder, an elder with the Elizabeth City ward of the church, commonly known as the LDS or Mormon Church.

The South Camden Ruritan Club is the beneficiary of the local efforts.

Yoder and 25 to 30 members of the Elizabeth City ward will spend Saturday putting up aluminum siding on a 2,000-square-foot building where the Ruritans and Boy Scout Troop 158 meet. Most of the volunteers, including Yoder, live in or near Shiloh.

The old Ruritan building sits next to N.C. 343 South in the heart of the community. It was once the cafeteria for the old Shiloh High School built in 1923. The school building still stands beside the Ruritan building and serves as The Shiloh Shopping Center, a general store with everything from snack food to faucet washers. The Topside Restaurant operates on the second floor.

The humid climate of coastal North Carolina had taken its toll on the Ruritan building. Several pieces of the wood siding had warped and cracked. Layers of white paint demonstrated past attempts at weather proofing.

This time, the Ruritan Club members had raised more than $2,000 to cover their building in aluminum siding, but the work estimate came to $3,600, including labor.

Joe McPherson, a Shiloh resident and member of the LDS Church, approached Yoder about their plight.

``Everything worked out together,'' said John McClung, president of South Camden Ruritan Club. ``We've enjoyed the fellowship. We're very fortunate to have these men help us out.''

With discounts on the insulation and the siding, the entire project will cost less than $2,000, said Yoder.

Yoder, and four men experienced in siding, McPherson, Garland Staples, Mike Cosgrove and Jimmy Culvert, organized volunteers into crews. Last Saturday, they prepared the old exterior for a covering of hard foam insulation. This weekend, the aluminum siding goes up. Yoder estimates there will be about 300 total man-hours logged by Saturday afternoon.

This is the third construction service project by the LDS group this year. They have helped renovate a family's home and repaired the roof of a widow's house, both in Camden.

They say they are following a mandate to serve as Jesus served, a principle taught by the church leaders since it was founded in 1830.

``Any service we can do . . . at any time will be cheerfully done, for our ambition is to be serviceable to our country,'' said Joseph Smith, the first president of the LDS Church.

In Athens, Greece, church members plan to pick up litter on Mars Hill and at the Acropolis. In Nigeria, volunteers will clean up and paint public buildings, and the women's organization of the church will bake and distribute bread to orphans and the needy.

In the Philippines, members will clean a polluted river that flows through a housing area and dig a trench for a new clean water supply in a another village.

The worldwide event commemorates the completion of a 1,300-mile trek west by Mormon pioneers in July 1847. When Brigham Young saw the expansive and uninhabited Salt Lake valley, he declared, ``This is the right place.'' Some 70,000 others followed him there over the next decade. During the migrations, more than 6,000 Mormon pioneers died.

The LDS Church has 10 million members in 140 countries and 22 territories.

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