“We all need to build a personal ark . . . And we shouldn’t wait until it starts raining, but prepare in advance. This has been the message of all the prophets in this dispensation . . . as well as the prophets of old. Unfortunately we don’t always heed the clear warnings of our prophets. We coast complacently along until calamity strikes, and then we panic. When it starts raining, it is too late to begin building the ark. However, we do need to listen to the Lord’s spokesmen. We need to calmly continue to move ahead and prepare for what will surely come. We need not panic or fear, for if we are prepared, spiritually and temporally, we and our families will survive any flood. Our arks will float on a sea of faith if our works have been steadily and surely preparing for the future.” (W. Don Ladd, October 1994 General Conference)
When things are going well in our lives it is hard to think anything will ever go wrong again… and then life happens. We need to prepare for those "life happens" episodes. Yep, they are going to happen. You can suffer through them or suffer a bit less. Remember chocolate cake helps! Store things for that if nothing else, okay store other things too but chocolate cake will help everyone cope better and if it is not your crisis then take the chocolate cake to the person whose life challenges are upon them.
Remember store your food properly! I once went to a food storage fair, different families had different areas to bring food from, kind of like a pot luck. Someone had stored their egg noodles maybe in a bucket maybe not but for sure they had been stored directly on concrete, eeeeeewwwwwww it was so very nasty tasting. So unless you want to eat that I recommend you put wood between storage and concrete and carpet does not count, it has to be wood.
Also proper caring for your storage: ROTATION! Would you like the taste of twenty year old vegetable shortening or oil? No! The rancid infiltrates the flavor of the food, ick on steroids.
So if you have 14 cans of shortening (I just a tossed out a number) you just used up a can and need to get another, so you go to your storage, take the can from the front. Now go to your grocery list and put it at the top of list. Then when you get home with it you put it away to the back, dating it with a pen is idea good too. Now you have fourteen cans, how then does it go bad??
You decide, I will just buy one and stick it in the cupboard and I will save myself a trip to the basement then when you really need to have it your storage will be nasty. Then there is "I have fourteen so why bother to replace? I will then have more spending $." In time you will need to run down to the basement for more and to your shock you have none. Same as putting it in front and pulling from front, the old gets rancid.
This is just simple math and a sense of peace.
One more thing, if you buy something on sale just because it is on sale and you know no one likes it (like lima beans) do not convince yourself "if they are hungry enough they will eat it." No, they will not really. Lima beans are just misunderstood. This too is why you need variety. Food fatigue is a real thing so work with your budget and start or enhance your storage.
Personally at the ripening age of 59 I have seen many things. I have seen what a trucker’s strike can do to Rapid City, SD. I walked into the store mostly to just pick up something for storage. What did I find? Dog food just a few bags and some vanilla. I tell you I have never seen such a thing. I was glad I had storage a few years earlier and we wouldn't yet had we not been members of the church. They looked a lot like this minus anyone with stuff in the cart - http://c3240dd96f54819fb6f2-90846526673b19d9a04c27097b58cb86.r6.cf2.rackcdn.com/2011/07/empty-grocery-shelves.jpg
We all have seen disaster after disaster, we know they cannot be predicted.
I have seen over the years that food storage for many is getting harder and harder to gather with higher prices and lower pay or no pay at all.
If I told you that you had to buy your food storage all this one day? For so many reasons that is way too hard and you would not able to do it in any way. What if you got a little each time you went to the store? Which is lots more doable and lets you take advantage of sales. It is almost painless. Just get into the habit, have a running list in your purse or wallet.
What will you have wished you had bought if you had a spare five dollars and you ended up with no income?? You would probably kick yourself for eating out when that money could have gone into future needs for the whole family. I am not hating on the eating out, I'm just asking what would you wish you would have bought?
Back at the time of the trucker’s strike stores had more food in them. Now if there was an emergency there is 24 hours of food in the grocery stores. If the weather maybe fine here but not between or on the shipping route and roadways, it will take longer than normal to get going again. You can see given all the people who rely solely on the stores they could be in real trouble.
Oh I know what you are thinking, nothing much can happen in Iowa… Stop and play the "what if" game. Sure, we probably won’t have a hurricane but we have had the remnants. We have had flooding, we have had bad tornadoes - even in November. There are fires, things small and grand less you think "well at least we don’t get earthquakes" think again. True we haven’t had big ones yet but I can remember feeling the effects of one when living in a town five miles to our north with my little preschoolers. At the time I did not know it was a quake I think in Missouri but Laura and I are very sensitive to motion and we both got sick at once. It was not till the next day that it was an earthquake being felt, I can’t imagine being in an epicenter. So yes, we can have them here and they might not be so small.
Look at the horrid flooding in 1993. It is not forgotten in these parts where Des Moines lost their drinking water in the floods then eventually Ankeny. We had water in Slater and our town was sending water. We had people come shower and do laundry and fill up water. I can remember after sacrament we were dismissed to go help sand bag. http://cdn.patch.com/users/790386/2013/07/T800x600/9da79a6b2c935f1f71327b82a147df45.jpg in the end the water plant was breached
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/photos/portfolios/bill_greene?pg=4
http://www.rothcpa.com/floodissue.jpg
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/flood_pod_image.html those who lived here at that time remember well.
http://www.dsmh2o.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/flood-of-1993-aerial-view-2.jpg water everywhere.
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/midwest-floods-a-prayer-for-the-farmers-and-everyone-in-iowa.html it was a bad time all over Iowa.
http://www.ursispaltenstein.ch/blog/weblog.php?/weblog/comments/tornado_tears_through_iowa_town/ - Woodward. I can remember all churches in the area, Ankeny too, working in unison.
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.13119.1313667219!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_1200/gal-year-12-jpg.jpg if this doesn’t show real need. Our basement flooded that year and the insurance man came to see and he did not go down very far and said just be glad this is not as bad as Parkersburg. As bad as that was for us yes we were feeling blessed.
http://www.komonews.com/news/national/12356371.html - crippling ice storm, some people were out of power for two weeks ask Sandra Carnahan Ankeny 1st ward, just how much fun was it Sandra??
Complacency is thinking it will never happen here. Life is good, nothing can happen now. Tell it to anyone who lived these things…remember these were not "oh well that was a hundred years ago." It was not all that long ago, and this was just a few then expand out from there to other states then other countries. It doesn't matter where you live.
I guess we don’t have to look too far to see how bad things could be.
Those pictures are in our wonderful state of Iowa and not that long ago either. As wonderful and beautiful as it is in Iowa, we must be prepared along with everyone else.
For those new to these things it will be an eye opener, to those who lived it a stroll down memory lane.
What do you wish you would have had in storage? Has that answer changed? What if you were wet dirty tired and hungry? Food for thought.
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