More and more, I see, hear and read about Santa Clause and gifts being the main focus on Christmas. It's time we got back to and teach the true meaning of Christmas which is the Gift Heavenly Father gave us of his Son, Jesus Christ. I hope that is the message we can give to everyone we meet.
I have been thinking about what I can write about preparedness this month and thought what a great time it would be to give gifts of something we can use to be more prepared and follow the council of the Prophet. We have been thinking about what would we do if our Bishop told us we had to leave the area and gather in a more secure place because of the increasing wickedness of this area and the world. What would we do for shelter, sanitation, food and other necessities? I know what Maslow's hierarchy of needs says but by now, we generally have the top three covered. The last two areas of the triangle are Safety and Physiological. What would we need if we were told to leave or "get out of
Dodge"? These are my thoughts; yours may be different. but here we go.
1. Shelter: What would we use for shelter? We are working on two different types of shelter. We purchased a same as new 7'X16' V nosed cargo trailer off of Craig's list at a hugh discount and are in the process of converting it into a "stealth camper". By most all outward appearances, it looks like a cargo trailer......well except for the windows on each side, but in the interior, it will be all set up with everything we need to live in. It will have a kitchen area with refrigerator, sink, stove top, oven, microwave and cupboards. It will also have a shower stall, toilet and a queen size bed. It will have A/C and heating, storage areas along with a fresh water tank, hot water heater and possibly a black water tank. There will be a shore hookup for outside electricity and water hookups with a generator and DC batteries with an inverter when no commercial power is available. I am also going to put a solar panel on the roof so the internal batteries can be recharged without using any outside external source that requires fuel or commercial power. Of course, I will have a small area for my Ham radio to mount with a couple of different antenna mounts on the exterior so I can talk to the world and Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City.
While working on the trailer, we have been watching for a deal on a good tent. After doing a lot of research, we settled on an outfitters style walled tent. In our case, it is a Cabela's Alaknak 12'X20' tent. Your needs may be different but get the biggest one you can afford and move around in easily with equipment inside it besides your beds. We called around to several Calela's with a Bargin Cave and found one for $600 off the regular price. They said they would ship it free to the Glendale store and it would be there in 4-5 weeks. 9 weeks later it wasn't there and they didn't know what happened to it. I just happened to be looking on Craig's list and found a brand new one that a disabled VET had won and not used. He sold it to me for half the new price. You might think that the size is overkill but our thoughts are that the space will get used. I want to be able to do everything inside that I could do outside like sleep and cook if the need arose.
3. Physical needs. Do you have at a minimum a 72 hour kit for each person in your family? Have you been stocking up on "no flame" food, you know, the kind you eat every day and don't need to cook? Have you been stocking up on your long term food storage? Another reason for us for getting the trailer was so that we could pack our food storage in it and take it along also.
When it comes to staying warm, my thinking is that you purchase the warmest sleeping bags you can get. It is a lot easier to unzip it during warm weather or sleep on top of the sleeping bag and throw a sheet over you than it is to have to light of a bag and not be warm enough when it is cold. For that reason, we bought military surplus extreme cold mummy sleeping bags several years ago on a deal through Ebay. I always had two of them with me when I was delivering new RV's to dealers around the country and Canada. They came in handy when I got struck for several hours in Canada and it was -40 degrees outside and the engine would not start because the diesel fuel had gelled. I put one under me and the other one unzipped on top of me with my feet in the partially zipped end of the bag in the back seat of my crew cab truck and waited for help. I would have frozen with out them. We will have a down comforter in our trailer with extra blankets but we are also going to get a sleeping bag for two rated at zero degrees and remember, two people put off twice the body heat as one.
The American Blackout, a National Geographic Documentary
I think it is very realistic. If you don't think it will happen, go ask people up and down the east coast, especially New Jersey after the hurricane went through or ask every one in Joplin Missouri after the tornado two years ago, the people in Japan after the tsunami or the people in the path of the lava flow in Hawaii. Have a family home evening after watching it and council together what you can do as a family to become more prepared. It is far better to be able to say, "I am ready" than to say, "Oh how I wished I would have been ready". I know as you plan and start to become more prepared, Heavenly Father will bless you with inspiration and ways to accomplish the things you do to follow the council of the Prophets. He did for us.
