The Significance of Armor

Reading in Alma 48-ish this morning. It spoke of the Nephites' preparations for war, and how they were always one step ahead.

One thing that struck me was how the Lamanites were continually trying to keep up. One way they did this was to finally figure out that armor would be a good idea. This thought of armor got me thinking about preparedness in other ways--not necessarily for war.

Armor is intended for individuals. There are things we do for emergency preparedness to protect the greater good--food storage, emergency supplies--but what am I doing to protect the individuals in my family? Are my children prepared to take care of themselves if something were to happen while they were at school?

Each year, I send $10/child to the elementary school's PTO so that they can purchase some items to have on hand in the event of an emergency--granola bars, etc. Is this enough, and what about my older kids? I have never heard of any such thing at the middle or high schools.

We have our 72-hour kits here, which is great--I need to be prepared to rotate them this weekend (we do it Conference weekend), but what are the chances that my kids are going to be home when and if something disastrous were to happen? I would say pretty slim since so many hours are spent away from home.

So, maybe there needs to be some focus on preparing them as individuals so that, no matter where they are, they are ready to care for themselves. I just found this.

I haven't created my big plan yet, but this is definitely going to be one of those frogs I'm going to have to include. My list just keeps growing.

To keep my head straight, here's what I'm remembering from the past couple days:

• Clean out food buckets (still not done--I'm cringing about the amount of wasted water to do this. Ugh!)
• Find lids for food buckets
• Purchase canned fruit
• Purchase peanut butter
• Create the big emergency preparedness plan for the fam
• Buy items to rotate the 72 hour kits this weekend
• Buy items (including bag) for mini kids' survival kits

None of these things are all that hard. The trickiest is probably the 72 hour kit ingredients. My sister-in-law used to get the items at their Super Saturday activity. They'd make the food portion of 72 hour kits available to all of the sisters in their ward. I thought this was BRILLIANT! You'd pay $5 per person and voila! I didn't hear about anything like this this year, so I'm on my own. I'll have to get a kit out here soon, get the bag of food pulled out and create a shopping list.