Weekly Wisdom #11

 

Weekly Wisdom #11

Motivational Monday – President Kimball said: "How often do Church members arise early in the morning to do the will of the Lord?... How often do we say, "Yes, I will obey the commandment to store food and to help others, but just now I have neither the time nor the money to spare; I will obey later"? Oh, foolish people! While we procrastinate, the harvest will be over and we will not be saved. Now is the time to follow Abraham's example; now is the time to repent; now is the time for prompt obedience to God's will."

"We must do more to get our people prepared for the difficult days we face in the future. Our major concern should be their spiritual preparation so they will respond with faith and not fear. "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear" (D&C 38:21). Our next concern should be for their temporal preparation. When the economies of nations fail, when famine and other disasters prevent people from buying food in stores, the Saints must be prepared to handle these emergencies. This is a matter of concern for area, region, and stake councils." President Benson

These days are upon us. We see daily the economies of nations failing, famines throughout the world, and talk of more shortages of food. I believe the day to procrastinate the counsel to get temporally prepared has come and gone. We must give our temporal and spiritual preparation our top priority.

Timely Tuesday – Take a quick preparedness test today. If you can, do it with your family. And find what areas you perhaps need to focus on.

Preparedness Test

1. Has your family rehearsed the fire escape routes from your home?

2. Do you know what to do before, during, after an earthquake or tornado?

3. Do you have access to an operational flashlight in every bedroom? You could have light sticks instead.

4. Do you keep shoes near your bed to protect your feet if you have to evacuate during the night?

5. If a water line was ruptured, do you know how to shut off the main line to your house?

6. Can this line be turned off with hands or do you need a tool? Is the tool close by?

7. Do you know where the main gas shut off is to your house?

8. Do you know how and would you be able to shut off this valve if you smelled gas?

9. Do you know how to safely restart your furnace when gas is safely back on again?

10. Do you have working smoke alarms in place?

11. Do you have a fire extinguisher handy in case of small fires?

12. Do you have duplicate keys and copies of important papers stored outside your home?

13. Do you have an emergency radio and batteries?

14. Do you have a meeting place if your family has to evacuate your home?

15. If an emergency lasted for three days or longer:

    1. Would you have sufficient food for your family?

    2. Would you have the means to cook without electricity?

    3. Would you have sufficient water?

    4. Do you have your 72 hour kits easily accessible?

    5. Have y ou established an out of area contact for your family?

    6. Do you have first aid kits in your home and each car?

    7. Do you have emergency cash on hand in small bills or coins?

    8. Do you have ways to heat at least part of your house without electricity?

    9. Do you have at least a month's supply of medications on hand?

    10. Do you have sanitation plans for alternate toilet facilities?

    11. Where are you in your food storage supply? 3 months? 6 months? 1 year?

This should give you a basic overview of how prepared you are for basic survival. If you have answered no to any of these, then work in that area. If you answered yes to them all....good for you, and think in those areas of how you can improve and make it even better.

Workin' Wednesday – Pick one of the areas above that you answered no to, and do something today to help change the answer to a yes.

Thrifty Thursday – I got this idea off of a thrifty tips website. I thought it was a good one, and I do this alot, because I find that if I grab a cart when I go into the store, it inevitably gets full. So if I only have a basket or my hands, I am more likely to come out with what I actually went in for.

SHOP WITHOUT A CART

"Have you noticed how big shopping carts are getting? They are designed to keep you shopping! Avoid the spending trap by only taking a cart when you know you have alot to buy, or are buying something big. Use a basket to carry your items, or go for one of the smaller carts available. You will be less tempted to impulse buy when you don't have the space to carry everything.

Then before you get to the counter, quickly look over your items and make sure that they are something you really need. There are likely things you could put back until another time. Impulse buying is one of the worst money wasters of all! Take a list, take a basket, and think thrifty!

Food Storage Friday – Today lets quickly review the minimum requirements for long term storage.

This is for 1 adult male for 1 year and = approximately 2300 calories per day.

Grains – 400 lbs – white flour should be a part of this as well as rice, pasta, and other grains your family uses, learn to sprout grains, this greatly increases their vitamin content, and wheat grass is one of the best vitamin supplements you can use.

Beans & Legumes – 60 lbs – Black beans cook quickly, soy beans can be used to make soy milk and tofu, most beans are good for sprouting,

Dairy –minimum 16 lbs – milk powder can be used to make cottage cheese, cream cheese, and hard cheese, sour cream, whipped topping, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and of course drinkable milk

Oils – 10 quarts – This will help boost the calories and supply your essential fatty acids, as well as making cooking so much easier

Sugars – 60 lbs – This includes honey, syrups, white and brown sugars, candy and other sweets that will help keep appetite fatigue away

Salt – 8 lbs

Water – minimum 14 gallons

Two five gallon buckets will hold about 75 lbs of wheat, rice or other grains. So you will need 11 buckets of grain for each person in your family. Beans – a 25 lb bag of beans will fit in a 5 gallon bucket with a bit of space left over, so 2 buckets would hold about a one person supply for one year.

If you divide 400 lbs of grain by 365 days, it equals to just over 1 lb of grain per person per day. That is approximately 2 cups of unground grain to cover your three meals for the day.

If you divide 60 lbs of beans by 365, this works out to 0.16 lbs of beans per day or 2.6 oz, or about ¾ cup.

This isn't much food to live off. It would keep you alive, but wouldn't be wonderful or pleasant. Get these basics for each person, and then work hard to add other kinds of food such as canned or dried fruits and vegetables. If all you have are the basics, then you are going to live off the minimal survival diet, but at least you will be alive. One example of this would be this minimum diet would provide about 6 small biscuts per person, per day, or one plateful of pancakes.

Recipe

Lentil Soup – Serves 8 – 10

2 cups lentil

1 ½ quarts water and 6 chicken or beef bouillon cubes, or broth equivalent

1 large can or bottle stewed tomatoes

1 bay leaf

3 carrots sliced

1 onion diced

salt and pepper to taste

1 lb cooked hamburger or tvp substitute (optional)

other vegetables sliced or diced (optional)

Put all ingredients in kettle and bring to boil (except hamb or tvp) let cook until tender. Add hamburger and heat. Serve with corn chips or biscuts.