While he was in Missouri in spring 1832, Joseph “received a welcome known only by brethren and sisters united as one in the same faith.” These Saints, including widows Phebe Peck and Anna Rogers, were acting on the law of consecration as best they could. The law specified that “individuals” should consecrate surplus to the storehouse maintained by the bishop so that “every man who has need may be amply supplied and receive according to his wants,” but it was not clear that women could be supplied as well (Doctrine and Covenants 42:33). Section 83 is an “addition to the laws” already given. It clarifies that the storehouse is for widows, orphans, and children whose parents cannot provide for them. “They have claim upon the church, or in other words upon the Lord’s storehouse, if their parents have not wherewith to give them inheritances” (Doctrine and Covenants 83:5). The storehouse, in turn, is to be stocked by the consecrated offerings of the Latter-day Saints. “Widows and orphans shall be provided for, as also the poor” (v. 6).
Generally speaking, Latter-day Saints past and present have practiced these principles beautifully. When he dedicated the new Bishops’ Central Storehouse in 2012, then-President Dieter F. Uchtdorf recalled his boyhood in post–World War II Germany, when food, clothing, and bedding was sent from the Church’s storehouses to meet the needs of his family and others.
