Prepare Your Ark

Prepare Your Ark 101

October 1998

President Hinckley said in conference “I am not predicting years of famine in the future. But I am suggesting the time has come to get your houses in order. There is a portent of stormy weather ahead to which we had better give heed.”

Since that time we have experienced:

• recession
• earthquakes
• drought
• widespread disease
• rising unemployment
• political unrest
• war
• economies collapsing
• fires
• tornadoes
• hurricanes
• horrible storms
• terrorism
• and any multitude of other problems

Seven years later in 2005 President Hinckley said in conference:

“What we have experienced in the past was all foretold, and the end is not yet. Just as there have been calamities in the past, we expect more in the future. What do we do?

Someone has said it was not raining when Noah built the ark. But he built it, and the rains came.

The Lord has said, “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.” D&C 38:30

We can so live that we can call upon the Lord for His protection and guidance. This is a first priority. We cannot expect His help if we are unwilling to keep His commandments. We can heed warnings.

Our people for three-quarters of a century have been counselled and encouraged to make such preparation as will assure survival should a calamity come.

We can set aside some water, basic food, medicine, and clothing to keep us warm. We ought to have a little money laid aside in case of a rainy day.

Now what I have said should not occasion a run on the grocery store or anything of that kind. I am saying nothing that has not been said for a very long time.”

We really need to build our own arks to help shelter and protect our families from the storms that the prophets have forseen in our future, just like Noah did in his day.

President Benson said:

“The revelation to produce and store food may be as essential to our temporal welfare today as boarding the ark was to the people in the days of Noah.....Too often we bask in our comfortable complacency and rationalize that the ravages of war, economic disaster, famine and earthquake cannot happen here. Those who believe this are either not acquainted with the revelations of the Lord, r they do not believe them. Those who smugly think these calamities will not happen, that they somehow will be set aside because of the righteousness of the saints, are deceived and will rue the day they harbored such a delusion. You do not need to go into debt. Plan to build up your food supply just as you would a savings account. Save a little for storage each paycheck. Make your storage a part of your budget. We urge you to do this prayerfully and do it now. When will all these calamities strike? We do not know the exact time, but it appears it may be in the not too distant future. Those who are prepared now have the continuing blessings of early obedience, and they are ready. Noah built his ark before the flood came, and he and his family survived. Those who waited to act until after the flood began were too late.”

That is the WHY should I do it?

I have always believed in food storage. As a child it was a huge part of my life. My parents grew huge gardens and we put everything up in freezers or jars for the winter.

Not everyone is fortunate to have grown up already knowing and having faith in the blessings that come from food storage. I have also had my own witnesses of food storage through our own married life that has only strengthened my testimony of the blessings that come from being obedient.

So HOW do I go about starting?

First of all don't think – the whole big picture – all at once, and then get so overwhelmed that you don't even know where to begin, so you quit, close the book and never look at it again.

Think small chunks that are doable. I have several ways that I have helped people get their food storage off and going. There is a weekly buy plan which I did in first ward a couple of times. Many people followed this guideline and at the end of the 52 weeks felt so much better at the food they had managed to accumulate through the year.

You can plan to store food according to what kinds of things go on sale. Watch the flyers carefully and when you see a really good sale, commit yourself to purchasing several months worth of that item, because then you know you don't have to buy it again until it goes on sale next time. For example: flour was on sale a few weeks back at Co-op for 7.99 for a 10kg bag. That is a really good price, so I went and bought 10 of the bags. Now I know that I don't have to buy flour again for a year or so. When Pasta was on sale last week at WalMart for 1.25 for a 900g bag, that is a really good price, so I bought 25 bags of it and put it on my shelf downstairs.

It may seem like a fairly large purchase at the time for some, but once you have been doing it this way for awhile, you soon have enough of a store in your own home, that you really on buy things that are on sale, or fresh produce, meat and dairy items.

You can do it in baby steps, by first gathering a 72 hr kit, then gather a 3 month supply, and work your way up to a 1 year supply. Don't think you need it all tomorrow, unless you have excess amounts of cash on hand to just run out and buy it, but most of us can not do that.

There are several different kinds of food storage calculators online that you can access for free, if you want to go and plug in the details of your family and find out exactly what it recommends as food storage for your family for one year.

WHERE am I going to store it all?

This is another step that usually stops people in their tracks because they don't have the space to store much food. And definitely there are circumstances that they really don't have the space. However, most people I find who say this to me, are more worried about what people will think if they see a few buckets here and there, and if they have to convert their spare bedroom into a storage space, what will people think. It does cause a bit of clutter, if you don't keep up with it.

Convert a spare bedroom into a storage room if you have one. Add extra shelving to closets and pantries to make more room for storage. Make use of the space under your beds, behind television sets, in the top parts of closets, in the tops of cupboards that usually fills up with useless stuff anyways. I wish I could find the one quote that I really wanted to find. I think it was by Lorenzo Snow, and he said regarding not having space to store food. “If you could see what I see, you would stack your food in the middle of the living room and walk around it.” Meaning that you would find a place to store it because he knows what lies ahead for us, and he wouldn't be without it.

Now I am not suggesting that you just get into hoarding and stack it in the middle of your floor. I think that we can surely be a little more creative than that. I currently have my family room in the basement right now, converted into my storage room. Someday when my kids mostly move out and I get a free room again, it will go back into a bedroom. But for now I believe that it is important enough that I am willing to give up a room for it.

I have been through some really tough times, when Logan and I were first married, to the point where we literally had no food in our home. I remember crying myself to sleep one night because I didn't know where breakfast and lunch were going to come from the next day. I prayed and had faith, and prayers were answered in miraculous ways for me. I very clearly remember thanking Heavenly Father and committing to myself that never again would I allow my family to be in the situation of no food in our home, because I couldn't bear the thought of telling one of my children, again, or my grandchildren, sorry honey, I have no food to give you, even though I know you are hungry.

So what MOTIVATES you to want to do food storage?

If you don't know why you need it, you won't find the motivation to do it. It is one of those things that is just too easy to push aside and procrastinate. But I assure you, that some day in your life, you will be grateful for being obedient to the commandment to store food.