Weekly Assignment, Food Storage and Emergency Preparedness (Week of March 3rd)

Hi Carson Ward Family, Family and Friends,

Congratulations to the Gracia Family. They won the February Carson Ward FREE Monthly Giveaway Drawing last Sunday. They won two 72 Hour Emergency Individual Personal Hygiene Kits for their 72 Hour Individual Emergency Preparedness Backpacks. In January the Adrianna Compos
Family won 4 hand squeeze LED flashlights for their 72 Hour Individual Emergency Preparedness Backpacks.

Setting Goals to become Self-Reliant...

Heavenly Father wants each of us to become self-reliant.  Self-reliant means "taking responsibility for our own spiritual and temporal welfare and for those whom Heavenly Father has entrusted to our care." (Robert D. Hales, "A Gospel Vision of Welfare: Faith in Action", 2009). When we set goals to become spiritually and temporally prepared (self-reliant), Heavenly Father will provide a way for us to accomplish our goals. First make a list of items that will help you and your family become self-reliant. Then set small goals, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, that will help you accomplish them. One goal might be to have a one month supply of food, and then expand to three months.

Temporal self-reliance is working hard, teaching your children how to work, gaining a good education, taking care of our own welfare needs, and food (and water) storage.

Spiritual self-reliance is having a firm spiritual foundation of the gospel/scriptures and faith in our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ, which will bring us peace, comfort, reassurance and greater faith when trails come.

If we are self-reliant we will be able to take care of ourselves and our family when a natural disaster hits, we are faced with unemployment, or financial turmoil. It is each of our responsibility to be self-reliant, not our extended family, not our neighbors, not our church, not our community, not our government. We need to set goals as an individual and as a family on what we need to do to become self-reliant: get a better education, work harder, teach our children the value of hard work, build up our food storage and emergency supplies, and build a stronger spiritual foundation. If you follow this blog it will help you become more self-reliant. If we set goals to become self-reliant we will have peace of mind.

There is a great article and story in this month's Ensign, March 2013, page 64-65, "Living the Principles of Self-Reliance".  Click the link to read this insightful article.

Weekly Assignment...72 Hour Emergency Individual Food Kit:

This week add the following...this is the last item to add...

1 two liter bottle of drinking water per each individual family member's food kit. This water is for drinking only, and preparing any foods that require water. Add this item to each family member's 72 Hour Individual Emergency Food Kit.

The rule is we need at least 1 gallon of water per person a day. But in this instance, that would be 3 gallons of water, which no one could carry. Water is heavy. How I get around this is I have a Seychelle Water Filtration Water bottle strapped to the outside of each family member's backpack. You may only need 1-2 Seychelle Water Filtration Water bottles per family. If you are at work you should have one strapped to your 72 Hour Emergency Backpack Kit. The Seychelle Water Filtration system filters out the dirtiest water 99.9999% of all bacteria and contaminates. See the blog "Posting" on the right under "Water Storage" for information on this great product and links where you can purchase them, or click here  to go directly to the posting.

Congratulations! If you have been following along on adding one food item each week to your 72 Hour Emergency Individual Food Kit, you have just completed the Food Kit. If you have not completed your Food Kit, you have missed some weeks, or never started, go back to the first week, click here and scroll through the weeks to this blog posting (March 3rd) to see what to add each week.

You should have the following in each individual Food Kit.

3 granola bars
3 juice/fruit box drinks
3 small boxes of raisins
3 packages of instant hot chocolate
3 packages of instant oatmeal, 3 small fruit cups or apple sauce
3 packages of peanut butter or cheese crackers
3 packages of instant dry soup mix
3 small bags or 1 large (1#) bag of trail mix
1 two liter of bottled water

IMPORTANT: If you add 1 large package of trail mix, also add 2 small zip lock baggies. Once you open the large package, divide into thirds, eat the first third per the menu, and then put the other 2 into the 2 small zip lock baggies for the next 2 days.

Where and how to place the food kit items: Place all the above items in a large plastic zip lock bag. I double mine for safety from water damage. It will all fit, you just have to work with it. If you get too frustrated with it, then place all the food in an extra large plastic zip lock bag. Do not place the 2 liter water bottle in with the food, it may leak. I place it in a extra large plastic zip lock bag and then put it in my 72 Hour Emergency Preparedness Backpack. Important: If you store your 72 Hour Individual Emergency Backpack in your house or work place the food should be good until the expiration date, usually one year. If you store it in your car trunk, which can get hot in the summer months, you may need to rotate the food and water sooner. I usually rotate ours every 6 months, and put the non expired food and water in our pantry to eat now.

3 Day 72 Hour Emergency Food Kit Menu

Make a copy of the menu below and place inside each Food Kit. It is the same menu for each day. I found that trying to do a different menu for each day was to complicated and cost more money.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, Raisins, Hot cocoa
Lunch: Peanut Butter or Cheese Crackers, Fruit Cup, Trail mix (1/3 of the large package)
Dinner: Soup, Granola Bar, Fruit Drink

Remember: If you have a special diet due to allergies, diabetes or other health/medication issues, consult with your doctor first regarding the menu. This is a high calorie and high fiber diet because this is all you will probably eat for 3 days.

Next week: We will start on the Snack Kit, only 4 items.

Emergency Preparedness:

Great News! We found out that Costco has a Costco Business Center near us (12530 Prairie Ave, Hawthorne, California).  If you have Costco in your area, you may have a Business Center near by too. It is open to public, you just need a Costco card. The lines are not crowded. This Costco is meant to serve businesses, so most of their items are in large containers, example: canned vegetables like green beans come in #10 cans. Great if you are having a large party and you do want to open 20 small cans. Go there and check it out to see what is available. They also have fresh vegetables, fruit, dairy and meats. It is worth a trip to check it out. You might find great things to add to your Food Storage.

Example of Savings: We love popcorn, in fact, we have had popcorn almost every night since 1971!. One day while at our regular Costco we found Orville Redenbacher popcorn in an 8 pound container for $11.99 (Item # 48551). At the regular grocery store you pay almost $7 for a 1 pound 14 ounce container. What a savings! The only bad thing, after that we could not find it again. My husband called around to see if other Costcos had it. This is when we discovered the Costco Business Center. We were able to purchase several for our Food Storage.

Comments: All your comments, ideas, suggestions and experiences are welcome! We all learn from each other.