When I was just 7 years old our family was invited to take a challenge. We were asked to not go to the grocery store for a period of 2 weeks so that we could really see how prepared we were. I remember coming home with my mom, dad and my 2 older brothers and running into the kitchen to check out possible meals for the next 2 weeks. Like I said, I was 7 years old and my brothers were 10 and 12 years old. We also had two older sisters that were married and had children of their own and lived about 1 hour away. When my older sisters would came to visit for the weekends they would bring little jars of baby food to have on hand for their kids.
This is what I remember about those two weeks.
At home we ate lots of pancakes and homemade soups and more pancakes. The jars of baby food became our school lunches. My older brother would ride his bike to Jr. High School and now for lunch he had jars of baby food to slurp, behind the school of course. My jars were brought to me in the lunch room by my other brother. I think he enjoyed it when he said,”Jeannie, here is your baby food.” Years later as I have talked to my brothers about this experience, they told me that our mother even went without food so we would be able to eat. Needless to say, we did not quite make it for 2 weeks without going to the store. I remember this like it was yesterday
I must have forgotten what I learned when I was 7 because my big sister Shirley called me one day and we had a little talk. That is what big sisters are for. She said that I needed to do better with my food storage so that we could take care of our children in an emergency and on an everyday basis. I said Shirley,” I am so busy just raising kids, I don’t have any extra time, extra money or even places to store food.” This just didn’t fly with my big sister, she basically said,” Jeannie, I don’t care whatever excuses you come up with, they are just are not good enough.”
I sat down with our kids and we had a talked. I needed their help.
The first thing I learned from talking to our children was that if we had a testimony of following the prophet, and the prophet told us that Heavenly Father wanted us to be prepared and have Food Storage, we wanted to be obedient and get our food storage. We needed to learn how to use it and eat it on a regular basis and everything else would fall into place. He would lead and guide us to do what we needed to do. They committed to help with shopping, preparing and eating our new meals. The rest is history. I have learned so much about preparedness, saving money and being prepared, now I have a passion for it and want to share the things that I have learned.
