When to Seek Help

The Church teaches we should be self-reliant and do what we can to sustain ourselves.  Responsibility rests with 1st - the adults in the household, 2nd - the extended family, 3rd - the Church.  We pay fast offerings and tithings in part to bless those who need our help.  When a financial hardship hits (whether it is a job loss, decrease of income, increase of expenses, a personal disaster, health problems, divorce or death), we often don't want to let others know.  We often want to believe we can still be self-reliant.  We don't want to seek help.  And while we should do EVERYTHING we can, we also need to not let pride get in the way. 

As soon as the hardship arises, seek counsel and guidance with your Bishop regarding your personal situation ... do it IMMEDIATELY after the hardship hits.  You may not need or want help at that point, BUT take the opportunity to counsel with him so he can help you when/if the right time arises..  He will probably discuss your bills, the cause of your hardship, what income you have, what potential or opportunities you have to increase your income and the ability your family has to help. 

One thing I was very grateful for is that when our Bishop found out about our situation, he counseled us to seek help from our family but if that wasn't available to come to him right away and not wait until we were at desperate.  He explained to us that he can pay utiltities and certain bills, he could offer us the opportunity to go to the storehouse ... but he couldn't give us gas money for the car or pay for other miscellaneous items at the store.  He encouraged us to let the Church help us with food or other things to allow us to extend our "runway" rather than us becoming completely destitute and in a bad situation before we asked for help.  He told us that he had seen some wait until they had exhausted every bit of savings and even credit and then gotten so far behind.  When they came to him, he couldn't do enough to help them.  It was too late and his hands were tied.  He didn't want that to be the case with us. 

It was a huge blessing to us that he counseled us so early.  We turned to our family and when they couldn't help much more, we got a little bit of help each month from our ward.  Because we had no idea how long it would last, it was very scary.  But because we got help all along, we were sustained and were able to endure much longer on our significantly reduced income than had we accepted no help from our family and the church.  We did not rely on the Church for everything ... we worked as hard as possible to pay as much of our own as we could, but we let the Church help with some of the smaller things to help ease our stress and burden while we worked like crazy to increase our income ... until 18 months later, our situation rebounded enough we could say we didn't need any more help. 

Talk to our Bishop about getting government assistance as well.  Ask for his guidance and counsel.  Our situation allowed us to get free school lunches for our children and it was an EASY process to qualify for that - a one page form that I printed out online and then mailed to our district office.  About two weeks later, when it was approved, my children just automatically had free lunch.  Nobody but us knew that.  My kids didn't even know at first.  They went through their lunch line and the staff member "deducted" a lunch from their account just like they would had I put money in their account in advance.  It wasn't until they realized I never had to put money in their account that they figured out what was going on.