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What makes the 110 storehouses around the country remarkable is that they are part of a system run almost entirely by volunteers. They grow the food on Mormon-owned farms, and package it at the storehouses. Volunteers drive trucks and deliver the food to distant wards - what Mormons call their sanctuaries - if recipients live more than 30 miles from a storehouse. As the recession has deepened, the church says it has seamlessly kept up with demand that increased 20 percent over the past year. But the intensely private church declined to say how many people or how much food that represented.

The origin of the storehouses stretches back to the church's early roots. Fleeing persecution, church members in 1847 began a series of journeys to the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. They created storehouses of grains and other goods along the trail to ease the journey for later groups.

During the Great Depression, the current concept of storehouses was formally established. The then-president of the church, Heber J. Grant, said that he had a revelation from God about the welfare system created by the New Deal.

"Our primary purpose was to set up, insofar as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self-respect be once more established amongst our people," Grant said, according to church officials.