Recently my wife and I spent some time in the Florida Keys.  It was amazing and nice to get out of the cold Seattle weather.

One evening under a full moon, we decided to walk along the beach and enjoy the amazing smells and sounds of the ocean.  We came upon a pier that went a few hundred yards out into the ocean and decided to venture out there.  Upon arriving, we saw some local fishermen fishing off the dock.  Suddenly one of them shouted “that’s a shark!”  We ran over to the fishermen and sure enough…a little hammer-head looking shark had been reeled in.  We all became instant friends as we talked with the fishermen about amazing stories of crocodiles, sharks, varieties of fish, life on the ocean, and hurricanes.  I was intrigued by their comments…especially about hurricanes.  They told me stories of huge hurricanes where the surge from the ocean was so huge that the island was covered with water and sharks were swimming in the streets. 

Fishermen tend to be good story tellers, so I’m not claiming that everything they said was 100% accurate, but it was fun to listen to non-the-less. 

After their conversation, I thought about the natural disasters we’ve had (flooding, etc.) in our part of the country recently and I thought about the prophet’s admonision to “prepare for a rainy day.”  I wasn’t going to write about this until I read a post on the Millenial Star about the role of prophets.  One of the comments mentioned something about preparing for a rainy day.  I thought I’d share what my wife and I have been doing in order to plan and prepare for a disaster. 

The LDS church is huge on planning and preparing for emergencies, getting finances in order, and many other things necessary for today’s uncertain economy.  This website is great to educate yourself on how to plan and prepare: http://www.providentliving.org/welcome/0,10803,1653-1,00.html

In addition, I’ve found a great website to order food supplies, etc.  We order something each month to add to our food storage.  This website is awesome and has the lowest costs out of any that I’ve seen: www.beprepared.com.  I think it is good to start with basic things like a 72 hour kit (www.code72.net) for each member of the family and then move up to food and water storage, extra clothing, etc.  If you set aside some money each month to spend on this, it could be the best insurance you have.

I know this isn’t the typical post, but I thought I’d share this for those who haven’t started their home storage.  If anyone has any other suggestions or ideas they’ve used in planning, feel free to share!  No one wants to get caught in a crisis with sharks swimming in their front yard!

P.S. I just had a thought that in addition to temporal storage we need to be constantly focusing on spiritual “storage” preparing to be closer to the Lord.  This is a whole post in and of itself so I won’t go into details, but feel free to share your ideas on this…

 

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