HUD Secretary Carson Visits Church’s Welfare Square

Contributed By Scott Taylor, Church News Managing Editor

  • 12 July 2019

Elder Kent F. Richards, right, walks Dr. Ben Carson, HUD secretary, center, through a Deseret Industries sorting area during a Welfare Square tour Thursday, July 11, 2019, in Salt Lake City.

SALT LAKE CITY

U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson toured The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’s Welfare Square as part of a brief visit in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 11.

Elder Jack N. Gerard, a General Authority Seventy, and Elder Kent F. Richards, an emeritus General Authority Seventy, hosted Carson at Welfare Square.

His brief tour included stops at a dairy facility and Deseret Industries, with the hosting leaders explaining the Church’s principles of welfare and self-reliance and the processes of gathering and making available food and new and used goods to help less-fortunate individuals as well as for humanitarian distribution.

The HUD secretary also toured several housing and mixed-use facilities while in Salt Lake City.

Elder Jack N. Gerard, left, and Elder Kent F. Richards, right, visit with HUD secretary Dr. Ben Carson in a Deseret Industries thrift store located at Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, during a July 11, 2019, tour.

Sister Marsha Richards, wife of Elder Kent F. Richards, offers a cheese sample to HUD secretary Dr. Ben Carson at the Welfare Square dairy facility in Salt Lake City, Utah, July 11, 2019.

Elder Kent F. Richards, left, and Elder Jack N. Gerard of the Seventy, center, greet Dr. Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, at Welfare Square—owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—in Salt Lake City, Utah, July 11, 2019.

Dr. Ben Carson, HUD secretary, walks into Welfare Square facilities with Elder Kent F. Richards, second from right, and Elder Jack N. Gerard during a Thursday, July 11, 2019, tour in Salt Lake City.

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