Provident Living + Emergency Preparedness

Recently, I've been feeling prompted to work on this area in our family. We've been speaking about welfare a lot in church, especially after General Conference. The Relief Society lesson yesterday was about being able to help others. The main point of the whole lesson was that we cannot help others if we're not self-reliant and prepared! I realized that that's what we're here for. We become more and more Christ-like as we help others! (Mosiah 2:17)


As a young, 2-person family, it is easy to think that we do not need food storage, a 120-hour kit, an emergency plan, etc. I guess since it's just 2 of us we don't see the need to plan. I don't know. An idea that keeps me from having food storage is that we don't have enough space or that we're not planning on being in this apartment for too long...why start? Another thing that keeps me from being prepared is thinking that nothing will happen to me. And if it does, sometimes I think that the items in a 72-hour kit won't really help (how foolish is that). It seems that I'm lacking some faith in this area. But I know that this is something that I need to do!


Lately there have been a ton of floods in Utah. Before going to Steamboat Springs, the valley was in a flood watch. Our apartment is on the first floor. Imagine if Provo flooded! Yikes! My first semester at BYU, there was a huge emphasis on 72-hour kits. This was a little strange to me. When I thought of 72-hour kits, I thought of hurricanes. I was so naive to think that 72-hour kits were only important to those living in hurricane-prone areas. We had FHE activities where we put some kits together. We also had a random "flood" evacuation practice. We had to leave ASAP and only had 2 minutes to get our kits. I remember that my 72-hour kit wasn't complete and I was so unprepared! If it would've been a real flood, I would've been in big trouble. 


Since then, the church has counseled to plan for 5 days (120 hours) instead of 3 (72 hours). This made the task seem even more daunting. But it is one of my goals this summer to start doing something about this and have our 2 kits complete. On top of all these recent impressions, Blaine and I watched I am Legend yesterday. Wow, was I traumatized! I'll probably never be in a situation like that, but he was a food storage/emergency prep guru. So right after the movie, we went to Walmart and started buying food for our kits. Although we still have some work to do, it felt good to start!


If anybody has any tips or advice, please share! 


"if ye are prepared ye shall not fear." (D & C 38:30)