Ken Merrell, volunteer chairman for America’s Freedom Festival, is in a conundrum, having a hard time coming up with enough bodies to help where help is needed.

According to Merrell, the festival events, including the parade, Freedom Run and Balloon Festival, together usually need somewhere around 2,000 volunteers.

Two major problems have cropped up. The first is that local university students have been reducing their volunteering over the past several years.

“We’d have hoards of kids (volunteering) in years past,” Merrell said.

The second issues is as of a few weeks ago, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not allowing a general broadcast letter to area bishops as was common for years. The letters asked if bishops would announce in Relief Societies and Elder’s Quorums the invitation to volunteer with the festival.

“We can’t use the church system to broadcast and that limits us to who we know,” Merrell said. “It is a big loss.”

Merrell said right now, the Balloon Fest is suffering the greatest with lack of volunteers.

As for the parade, Merrell said it is a good thing the LDS missionaries from the Utah Provo Mission are helping along the parade route, instead of marching in it this year, or they wouldn’t know what to do.

“It has come down to this, every entry must have four volunteers,” Merrell said.

Volunteer websites for events chairmen have been dead until a few weeks ago, which has been troubling. Merrell has been using two volunteer sites; SignUpGenius and VolunteerMatch.com, or people could just sign up on the festival’s website at freedomfestival.org.

Merrell said it’s still not too late to volunteer and he invites anyone who is interested to check the above websites or call the festival offices at (801) 818-1776.

Editor’s Note: Genelle Pugmire serves this year as co-chairman of the Colonial Heritage Festival in conjunction with the Freedom Festival.