Living at a Crossroads
by Elizabeth Matthews

Elizabeth Matthews is part of the 2004-2006 US-2 Missionary Class. She serves at Crossroads Urban Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Crossroads Urban Center

While the urban center was termed "Crossroads" when it was founded in 1966 in reference to its location in Salt Lake City - "the crossroads of the west" - it is a very appropriate name for where I am right now in life. A lot of change and transformation comes with following a call from God, and the drastic change in the weather (moving from Houston!) has been the mildest of those changes.


Crossroads is the largest emergency food pantry in the state of Utah, both in terms of the number of people we serve each year, and the volume of food we distribute. We have giveaways at Thanksgiving and Christmas where we distribute turkeys, stuffing, ham, and potatoes. We also run a thrift store where we give away seven times more clothing than we sell.

This charity work, commendable on its own, is only a part of the work done at Crossroads. The majority of our work done here is justice-based. Three social justice groups run out of this office.

One group is made up of tenants in low-income/affordable housing called the Utah HUD Tenants Association.

The Anti-Hunger Action Committee, or AHAC, is a membership group of clients from the food pantry who get together to discuss issues affecting their lives. We try to find solutions to problems such as a way to restore dental and vision benefits to Medicaid, or how to get discounted bus passes for those people on food stamps looking for work.

The Coalition of Religious Communities, or CORC, brings faith-based communities into conversation regarding social justice issues. We spend a lot of time at the state capitol during the legislative session working to pass new legislation, and most importantly, have it funded. Currently we are working on legislation for hate crimes, payday lending, and more equitable income tax bracketing.
Even in the relatively brief amount of time I have spent here, I have learned a lot about myself and about my community. As young adult missionaries, I and the other six US-2s throughout the country, made a covenant to "love mercy, act justly and follow humbly with our God," based on Micah 6:8. Moving to Utah by myself was a truly humbling experience, and I have learned that only with the help of God am I able to go forward into a life here. Working at Crossroads has given me the chance to both love mercy through my work in the food pantry, and act justly by seeking reforms that will give those marginalized by society a real chance. I have made new friends through both of these avenues, and my life will never be the same. The most important thing that my work here has taught me is that the people I am blessed to serve have no more "needs" than I do. They might have more material needs -- food or clothing, for example -- but they have a community of family and friends, and a closeness to Christ I have not seen before. So often we allow our material blessings to be a hindrance to a relationship with God and others. But working here in Utah, I have seen love given freely between complete strangers, simply because they knew they were brothers and sisters in a larger human race.
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