The Untold Story Of The Mormon Bayou Food Angel

How does it sound to cook food for an army of Mormon Helping Hand volunteers? How about doing the cooking from a mobile kitchen? How about doing with only limited help? Any takers? Oh, one more thing, you’re paying for all the food yourself and not getting paid for your work. Who in their right mind would do that? I know someone, Glenda Fuller, nicknamed the Mormon Bayou Food Angel.

Hundreds of Mormon Helping Hands volunteers ate her food this past weekend but almost no one knows her story, I had the chance to spend 2-3 hours helping Glenda Saturday night and she told me her story of service and sacrifice.

Backing up a bit, this Labor Day weekend I had the opportunity to accompany the Charleston South Carolina YSA Brach to Baton Rouge Louisiana as we joined with members across the south to help with the flooding clean up. It was surreal it looked like a war zone with what could only be described as rubble everywhere.

The flooded district of Baton Rouge.

At the end of gutting houses for the day we were told to head to the Zachary Ward building, as it was acting as the command post because the stake center was damaged by the flooding. (The story of how the Zachery building was protected from the floods is worth telling itself!) As we arrived in at the building we noticed there was food, which was odd because they told us that there would not be food provided. So I found the lady in charge (Glenda Fuller from Bossier Louisiana) and I asked her story and let me say it was amazing. Here is her story.

Glenda Fuller and her husband Kenneth live in Bossier, she runs a catering company called “cooking cousins” with her cousins of course. Earlier this year their home flooded with 2 feet of water so when she heard of the flooding here in Baton Rouge she wanted to help.

Physically with her back problems she can’t do much work so she wanted to find a way to help, So she prayed and reached out to Andrew Maas the man who is in charge of the Baker Mormon Helping Hands Command Center. She asked what she could do to help and he explained that everyone was being told to bring their own food and to gut houses. Glenda who could not physically gut a house told Andrew “I can cook! Can I come down and cook for everyone?” She told me that she thought for sure Andrew thought she was crazy but he told her to come on down…