Why rob those brothers/sisters of the rewards of obedience? Why deny them that blessing, that assurance?

Kudos to you, Connor for having it together.

Et voila!

I’d also recommend Emergency Essentials in Orem/SLC. Friendly, knowledgeable folks, and some great deals.

You can end up wasting hundreds of dollars on a poorly implemented strategy. Ever helped someone move who has “food storage” that has gone bad?

I wonder if the Church needs to focus a little more on training and tools to help people get started. Sure, there’s never an excuse, but more training might help people get moving easier and more quickly.

Connor’s post is very insightful, in that he suggests our obedience to this principle is indicative of what track we’re on. The scripture tells us that in the last days, even the very elect will be deceived. It appears the scripture is correct – - 85% of us are currently being deceived about the need to store food and prepare.

There is a misperception among LDS about what it means to store a year’s-worth of food. If you acquire the Church booklet “Home Food Production and Storage,” you will find numerous quotes there stating the commandment to store food is NOT to prepare for emergencies only, but is instead a WAY OF PROVIDENT LIVING. It is further stated in the booklet, the command is not given to promote “crisis thinking.”

So how does provident living relate to food storage? It works like this:

Suppose you run out of toothpaste. You stop at the gas station on your way home from work, and in the convenience store you pick up a tube of toothpaste for $3.50, so that you can brush your teeth when you get home. If you normally use one tube of toothpaste per month, you need 12 tubes for a year. So, $3.50 times 12 equals $42. So, now suppose you provide a place in your bathroom to store 12 tubes of toothpaste. You then find yourself in WalMart one day, and run across a sale on your brand of toothpaste for $1 per tube. You buy 12 tubes and store them in your bathroom. You have just saved yourself $30 dollars in your toothpaste bill over the next year. THAT IS PROVIDENT LIVING.

Why the figure of 1 year? Because if you’re living providently, you understand that every commodity is best obtained on a yearly basis. Example: Your apple tree is ready to harvest once per year. You pick your apples and sauce them and bottle them. (My one little apple tree gave me more than 50 quarts of applesauce one year.) You now have enough applesauce, obtained for way cheap, while the apples were at the freshest and most healthy state. By the time one year is past, your applesauce supply will need replenished, but your tree is again about ready to harvest. But, even if you don’t have your own trees, it is provident to go to an orchard to buy or pick your own year’s supply while the crop is the cheapest and healthiest. But even if you don’t have the facilities to bottle your own, the grocery store has a yearly case lot sale to get your case of applesauce for cheap. If you obtain your supplies on that yearly cycle of when it is the most provident, you have saved yourself tons of money. If you look at food storage this way, you quickly see that having a food storage plan is the cheapest and most provident way to live.

The prophets have encouraged us to obtain a supply of essential items. They caution against obtaining a detailed supply of things that are difficult and cumbersome to store. It’s OK by the prophets if we don’t have a year’s supply of ice cream or frozen pizza.

The Lord wants us to be resourceful and frugal. He does not condone waste. I have fed literally thousands of pounds of weevily wheat to my chickens, courtesy of obedient LDS who bought storage wheat but never used it. Their obedience was in vain, because they obeyed the letter, not the spirit of the commandment, which means Provident Living. If they had lived providently, the wheat would have been eaten before it went weevily. In other words, they did not cycle their year’s-worth of wheat and obtained more fresh wheat the following year! If you’re living providently, you are consuming what you’re storing.

If you’re obeying the spirit, not just the letter, you will see why the prophets have counseled us to plant gardens and the like. I there were a crisis, it would sure be wise to know how and be able to produce some of our food on our own.

It should now be plain to you about Connor’s concern about single adults. Everybody’s situation is different. Some don’t have storage space, some don’t have garden space, some don’t have families, etc. But if we live providently, we will look at our own situation and apply the principles of food production and storage and provident living to our own situation, and thereby become more self-reliant, just as is the end goal of the commandment.