Baby Steps for Emergency Preparedness

As I’ve recently felt an obsessive urgency to get “prepared”, I’ve often thought about the best way to go about it.

Do I pay off all my consumer debts first, or focus on getting a year supply of food first? Should I get camping gear or more water storage? What guidelines do I follow for getting a year supply of food?

That’s just a sampling of the questions going on in my head.

Being a long-time Dave Ramsey fan I put together a list of baby steps I thought seemed like a good idea to go about it. I struggled with some of the questions above as well as others such as, where does a 72-hour kit fall in?

So I created a list of 8 baby steps and asked for feedback on the LDS AVOW forums. The first response I got helped me see the folly of my thinking and change my whole list of baby steps.

So without further ado, the baby steps for emergency preparedness:

1. Prepare Spiritually

That’s it!

But what does it mean to prepare spiritually? I would start with the basics:

• Go to church and all your meetings – be with the saints and learn
• Study the scriptures daily
• Pray at least twice a day

We can add to these:

• Magnify your callings and assignments (that includes home & visiting teaching)
• Attend the temple regularly
• Study the words of modern prophets and give strict heed to their counsel

But above all these, I would say learn to recognize and follow the promptings of the Spirit as that will lead you to do all these things and more.

One thing that has been helpful for me recently is reading other good books. There is certainly good outside the scriptures and words of the prophets.

One of the grand fundamental principles of “Mormonism” is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may. (Smith, Teachings of the Prophet, 313)

Any book should be scrutinized by comparing its teachings to the scriptures and the prophets. Often the best books I’ve read are filled with quotes from the scriptures and prophets.

I’ve heard some say that these are simply the “philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.” I would challenge these people to read these books before making such claims. As you read you can ask yourself, what was the author’s motivation for writing the book? I would venture to say that if the author’s main objective is to bring people closer to Christ and bares testimony of truths, then you have a good book.

If you are preparing spiritually, you will be guided to know how to prepare temporally – and your number one priority may be completely different than my first priority.

Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on preparing spiritually and/or temporally?