In the wake of a disaster - dubbed by some media as "the great ice storm of the century" - Church members and missionaries in Northeast United States and Eastern Canada are giving service.

About 150 members of the Ottawa Ontario Stake participated in a stake-wide day of service Jan. 17. Local Church leaders contacted the Red Cross, the Army, and local mayors to identify what kind service would be required.In response, the members broke up into teams and went to work.

Some collected huge piles of branches and ran them through a chipper machine, said Pres. Gordon de Savigny. "Others went door to door checking on people who had been without power for two weeks, looking for signs of hypothermia and offering needed supplies. One team went door to door to ask if they could clean up community members' yards," he said. "We were working all over the stake."

The day was such a success, members of the stake - most of whom were also directly affected by the storm - have pledged to help their community recover from the disaster one Saturday a month for the next several months.

The service came after a storm Jan. 7-9 spread thick, clinging ice across Quebec and Ontario, in Canada, and New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine - cutting electricity to millions of people. The storm was followed by several days of snow.

As of press time Jan. 21, hundreds of Church members, living in mostly rural areas, were still without electricity. However, power had been restored to most of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm.

Other examples of members and missionaries giving service include:

- Church Welfare Services provided 12 emergency generators to the affected areas. One of these generators powered a Red Cross shelter with 60 beds. Another was used in the Mont-Saint-Hilaire Branch meetinghouse - which still did not have electricity Jan. 18.

- Missionaries in the Canada Montreal Mission have been providing service full time since the storm hit. One companionship spent several hours working at an animal shelter - where people who had to enter public shelters could leave their pets. There the missionaries fed and walked animals, and cleaned dog pens.

Other missionaries milked cows for dairy farmers who had no electricity, stacked and cut wood, removed branches and downed trees from roads and yards, and carried generators door to door for residents who still do not have electricity, said mission president Fredrick (Buck) Froerer III.

- Church members have volunteered to clear meetinghouse sidewalks and parking lots covered with ice, as thick as 10 inches in areas of the Montreal Quebec Stake. They are also shoveling snow and ice in their neighborhoods and communities, said John Delisle, president of the Mont-Saint-Hilaire Branch.

- John Dustan of the Ottawa 2nd Ward, Ottawa Ontario Stake, spent several days hooking up a generator to the sump pumps of people in his community who had left their homes. He and two neighbors would pump each house for 15 to 20 minutes and then move on to another house.

- More than 30 members in the Augusta Maine Stake unloaded 4,000 blankets sent by Church Welfare Services to the Red Cross and helped distribute them throughout the state, said Kathy Hansen, regional public affairs specialist.

- Hundreds of members in the Montpelier Vermont Stake have opened their homes to Church and community members who need showers, hot food or a warm place to sleep, said Pres. Richard A. Baldwin.

- Members in the Toronto area offered their homes to any disaster victims who wanted to get away from the affected areas for a few days and attend the temple, said Pres. Benoit Duquette of the Montreal Quebec Stake.

- In the Valleyfield area of the Montreal Quebec Stake, answering a request made by the Civil Protection Services, members and missionaries fed farm animals.