Resilience- Part 1- Personal Resilience

on October 19, 2012 at 3:33 am
Posted In: Prepping

Resilience

resilience

Resilience: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Resilience is an essential aspect of preparedness. When I think of something that is resilient,  I think of  of something that is hard to kill. That is what we try to build into our prepper plan. In this series of posts, we will discuss three different layers of resilience. There is  personal resilience, which is your  mental and physical ability to cope with adverse circumstances. There is financial resilience. Finally there is basic resource resilience. This envelopes all of your basic resources such as food, shelter, and water.

Personal Resilience

You are are your best survival tool.  You need to be able to depend on your body to get you out of harms way. You may also need it to procure food and water in a TEOTWAWKI situation. Looking overweight or weak can make you stand out as a target.  There is no need to start training for the Olympic swim team unless you have the 12 hours a day to dedicate to such an aspiration, but start doing what you can now to be healthy. This  includes trying to maintain a healthy body weight and developing muscle and cardiovascular endurance.

This doesn’t have to be hard. Eat reasonable portions and plan your meals. Cooking at home will develop a great skill as well as put you in control of the ingredients that are going into your meals. This is about finding healthy foods that you like.  For those of us who fight the scale, fad diets may take off the weight, but it always comes back. We have to make a lifestyle that is healthy and enjoyable. If you have the space, gardening will build resilience in all three areas. It will build personal resilience as you get some exercise planting, weeding and watering the garden. You will eat much higher quality food than you find in the grocery as well.  It will provide financial resilience as you save money on fresh produce you don’t have to buy.  It will also build basic resource resilience as you become able to produce even the smallest percentage of your own food.

Push yourself to get in or stay in shape. This is what ever you like to do. Walking, biking, running and swimming are all great cardiovascular activities. This will enhance your ability to survive the everyday work week by reducing stress as well as give you an advantage in a post-apocalyptic world. Strength training will help to make you more physically resilient as well. Stronger muscles make heavy tasks easier. They also work to support weak joints.

Work with your limitations; everybody can’t be a gold medalist. My personal limitation is arthritis in my knees and back. I can’t do extremely heavy lifting, but I work out with lighter weights 3 days a week. I find I have much less pain when I make the gym a priority. When I skip a few days in a row, everything starts to lock up. Running would kill my knees, but I am able to put in 30 minutes to an hour on an elliptical glider that gives me the same cardiovascular work out. Swimming is another great exercise for people with back pain or arthritis. Do what you can when you can. Because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.

According to the CDC, the top three causes of death are Heart Disease, Cancer, and Respiratory Disease, in that order. Heart disease can be greatly reduced by maintaining a healthy weight and exercising. Cancer may be the cause we have the least control over, but even it can be mitigated by a healthy lifestyle and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Respiratory Disease is primarily caused by smoking. This is a no brainier. I know it’s hard; I quit smoking myself.  But it is absolutely devastating to your health and your finances. It will also put severe limitations on your ability to move fast and far if the need should arise. If you smoke, quitting should be your number one priority in prepping. As with all addictions, it will be a lot easier to quit now than when it hit’s the fan. If we were to suffer a collapse, you will be operating in one of the most stressful situations of your life while you are unable to get a fix from your vice or vices of choice. Even if you are able to obtain your vice of choice, it will come at an extreme premium that will eat away at your resources much faster than it presently does. This jeopardizes everyone around you. Quitting your addictions will never be easier than today. It is the single best thing you can do to be more resilient.

Maintaining a positive attitude is essential to personal resilience. Your mind is what will keep you alive in tough situations. If you allow yourself to lose hope, you won’t survive a tough situation. Being connected to GOD will give you hope. Knowing the Creator of the universe is helping you through it will give you great peace in hard times. Getting connected to GOD is as easy as reading The Bible or praying. Our Prepper Links page has studies from the entire Bible on mp3 for free downloads.

We can train our minds to be more resourceful.When things break around the house, see if you can fix it yourself before you call the repair man. Some things aren’t as complicated as they look. While learning to DIY, you will train your mind to be more resourceful as well as save a few bucks and build your skill set. Our friends George and GA over at Survive2balive recently posted an article on the Art of Scrounging. It speaks about seeing value in things we often take for granted. For example, I try to find old decking on bulk trash day to use for the walls of my garden beds and compost bin. This saves money in the present and trains your mind to look for uses of otherwise discarded objects.

More than anything, resilience is an attitude. It is an attitude that is always looking to do more with less; an attitude that is always learning and staying positive. By being resourceful in the good times, you build a skill set that will be there for you in the hard times. By living below your means, you have already trained yourself to live on less in times of scarcity. Resilience is about doing what you can, when you can.

God bless you and happy prepping!

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Chris Martenson- The Crash Course

on October 17, 2012 at 3:52 am
Posted In: Economy, Potential Threats

Chris Martenson- The Crash Course

Dr Chris Martenson is the Host and producer of Peak Prosperity.com.  Peak Prosperity features experts from the worlds of energy, finance and resources. They discuss the potential threats that we face in the near future. The free downloadable weekly podcasts are available under the Featured Voices section of the website as well as  a direct link from Prepper Recon.com under Prepper Links.

The following video is Chris Martenson delivering a very condensed version of  “The Crash Course”. It is about 38 minutes long and covers possible causes  of an economic collapse in the near term future. He speaks briefly about environmental issues and difficulties involved with peak oil. The majority of his presentation is geared towards critical economic instabilities that will trigger the coming collapse. Chris Martenson gives a very direct presentation  that could be understood by a 10 year old who has never heard the word “economics” before. Yet he still provides fresh information in such a way that everyone will learn something, no matter how well educated.

I think there is great value in this video as a tool to open the eyes of those you care about. It is a window to a world that will be very different from the world of the recent past. If you have a spouse or family member who has been reluctant to start prepping, this may be the simple presentation that will get them to start thinking about it. If you enjoy this condensed version of  The Crash Course,you can watch the Full 3 hour Crash Course. It is very informative and presented in a very easy to understand way.

Peak Prosperity is not your average prepper site. It is not so much how we prepare, but it provides some of the most compelling reasons to prep that I have ever heard. In preparedness, it is very important to know what you are preparing for in order to properly plan. The Crash Course explains the instabilities in the financial system and the political hurdles to overcoming those problems. It also discusses at length, issues we will face in the future with resource scarcity. Chris Martenson has a new podcast available each weekend and most of his old podcasts are available to download free.

Leave us some feedback and let us know what you thought about Chris Martenson’s Crash Course and let us know what your favorite prepper and finance podcasts are.

Have a blessed day and happy prepping!

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Bug Out Location as an Investment

on October 15, 2012 at 4:03 am
Posted In: Prepping

Bug Out Location as an Investment

If any of you listen to The Survival Podcast, or TSP for short, you are probably familiar with their mission. Jack Spirko, the man behind TSP says at the beginning of each show that he is trying to bring you a better life if times get tough or even if they don’t. I think this is such a smart approach to prepping. We try to work it into every aspect of our preps. We buy the same foods for our long term food storage that we eat every day. My wife is in charge of this area of our preps. She uses coupons in such a way that we spend less buy stocking up on sale items than if we were to just buy what we need, when we need it. You can learn more about couponing in Mrs. Recon’s Coupon Corner. The effect is we have a better life if times get tough or even if they don’t. We maintain a 6 month food supply for 2 people at a cost of $50 a week or less.

We are also applying this principle in shopping for our Bug Out Location. As we comb realtor.com for good deals on a secluded retreat, we consider how we can profit from the bug out location between the time we purchase it and the end of the world as we know it( teotwawki). We try to look for an area that we can have some livestock  and a descent size garden. We also look for a property with established woodlands. If the bug out location can serve as a vacation home, that provides a great value. Since we live near the beach, our favorite place to get away is the mountains. We will not live there full time for now, so we are looking for a property that has enough trees to produce a small income from timber sales.

Millionaire investor Jim Rogers has long advocated farming and farmland as the investment of the future. The developing world is eating more grain intensive meat. Each pound of beef requires about 6 pounds of grain to produce. This is causing an ever increasing strain on global food production. Jim Rogers predicts it will be the farmers who are driving the Lamborghinis in the near future. While this prediction may be a bit tongue in cheek, the point is farm land is a limited resource and we are not making any more of it.

In this video from The Daily Ticker on Yahoo, Lester Brown, author of the new book Full Planet, Empty Plate discusses why he thinks food is the new oil and land is the new gold. Not only can a bug out location provide you a means of providing for yourself in case of a systemic break down, it is also very likely to hold or gain value over the near term future.

 

 

Read our 7 Step  Preparedness Plan to help decide where on your list of priorities a bug out location will fall. Make sure you have your budget, beans and bullets squared away before considering a large purchase like a bug out location.

 

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Sunday Prepper Bible Study- Joseph and the Famine

on October 14, 2012 at 4:15 am
Posted In: Bible

Sunday Prepper Bible Study- Joseph and the Famine

prepper

A little background- Genesis 37

In the book of Genesis, we read the story of the beginning of the nation of Israel. Jacob, whose name becomes Israel has 12 sons who are the patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel. One of those sons is Joseph. He was Israel’s favorite son and he did not hide it. Israel gave Joseph a very ornate robe as a sign of his love . This made his brothers jealous.  One night Joseph had a dream that there were 12 sheaves of grain and that the brother’s sheaves bowed down to his sheave. He told his brothers about this dream and they became angry and more jealous. The brothers devised a plan to get rid of Joseph. Long story short, they threw him in a pit until some traders came along and they sold him as a slave to the traders. They returned his fancy robe to their father and told him Joseph had been killed by wild animals. Israel was very sad to say the least.

Joseph in Egypt- Genesis  39 and 40

Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt. He was the slave of an important Egyptian official. The official’s wife was constantly trying to get Joseph to sleep with her, but Joseph refused. To get even with him for rejecting her, she accused Joseph of trying to rape her. Joseph was thrown in prison for several years under this false accusation. In prison, Joseph met  Pharaoh’s baker and cup barer who had been locked up while Pharaoh was in a bad mood. They each had troubling dreams which Joseph interpreted as meaning the cup barer would be restored to his position and the baker would be executed. Everything happened as Joseph said.

Pharaohs dream- Genesis 41

Years later, Pharaoh had a dream that no one in Egypt could interpret. He dreamed 7 fat cows came out of the Nile River. 7 skinny cows came out shortly after and swallowed up the 7 fat cows. He then dreamed of 7 full heads of grain followed by 7 dry sun scorched heads of grain that swallowed up the full heads of grain. The cup barer remembered the accurate dream  interpretations by Joseph. He told Pharaoh about him and Joseph was brought before Pharaoh at once. Joseph told Pharaoh that if he was to interpret the dream, the interpretation would have to come from GOD as he could not do it in his own power.

prepper

Pharaoh told his dream to Joseph who was given the interpretation from GOD. He told Pharaoh the dream meant there would be 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine. Pharaoh was so pleased that Joseph had interpreted the dream, he put him in charge of all of Egypt with the priority of being the head prepper to start storing food for the coming disaster. Joseph devised a prepper plan to allocate some portion of each harvest to be stored for the coming crisis. By the end of the 7 years of abundance, Egypt was well stocked with grain that would keep well for the 7 years to come.

Joseph feeds his brothers- Genesis 42

Joseph was also in charge of distributing the grain when the famine began. Israel sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain because the famine reached into the land of Israel as well. When his brothers came to Joseph, they did not recognize him. When they finally figured out that it was Joseph whom they had sold into slavery, they were terribly afraid.  He forgived them after having a little fun with them and moved his entire family to Egypt where the Israelites stayed for 400 years.

During the famine, Joseph was able to buy land very cheap from those who had not prepared for the famine. They were eager to sell their property to Joseph for grain that will keep them alive.

prepper

 Lessons for the prepper

The first prepper lesson in this story is to trust GOD. Even though Joseph went to prison, God had a plan. It was through that hardship that GOD elevated Joseph to the highest position in the land. Don’t let anxiety about the future get you down. GOD is in control just as he always has been. Do what you can to prepare and trust GOD for the rest.

The second prepper lesson is to have integrity at any cost. Joseph was willing to stand up for what was right. He refused to sleep with the official’s wife even though it cost him his freedom.

The third prepper lesson is that once GOD gets you where you are supposed to be, you are responsible to do the best you can with what you have to work with. Once Joseph was promoted in Egypt, he didn’t just sit back and say ” GOD will take care of me”, he got involved. He devised a plan to cope with the coming crisis. Then, he worked hard to implement the plan. He put Egypt on a plan to live below their means so they could have something for the future. If you consume everything you produce, you will have nothing tomorrow. It is such a simple concept, but one that is so far from the modern American mindset.

The fourth prepper lesson is that those who prepare now will have great opportunities in the future. Prices of land and every other commodity was reduced to the price of a few handfuls of grain in the famine. Joseph was literally able to purchase them for chicken feed. Stay out of debt and save everything you can. There will likely be a big sale in our future as well.

GOD was faithful to warn the people about the coming famine. Our present crisis has had no dream of thin cows and sun scorched grain, but there is no shortage of economists who see a grim future for the US and the global economy. Prepper Recon.com is committed to conducting reconnaissance on the web and other sources to bring you the most pertinent information on why and how to be prepared. If you are new to Prepper Recon.com or prepping, read our 7 Step Preparedness Plan to build a foundation in readiness for whatever the future may bring.

Come back every Sunday for a new Prepper Bible Study! The most important prep of all is knowing GOD. Jesus said “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his own soul?” Prepper interpretation: What good will it do you to survive the coming economic collapse, nuclear war or even a zombie apocalypse if you don’t know you will go to heaven when you die. A recent study claims that 100% of all humans eventually die! On that day we will meet our Maker. It only makes sense to be prepared for that day. Click here to learn more about knowing GOD.

Leave a comment to let us know what other lessons you learned form the story. E-mail us with any prayer request you may have or questions about knowing GOD.

Have a blessed day and happy prepping!

 

 

 

 

 

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Financial Collapse – Threat Assessment Part 3: Obama Care

on October 12, 2012 at 2:57 am
Posted In: Economy, Potential Threats

Financial Collapse – Threat Assessment Part 3: Obama Care

This is the third post in our “Financial Collapse – Threat Assessment” series. All of the threats are interrelated and have the ability to collapse our economy in concert or individually. For that reason, we have discussed them as individual threats. To have two or more occur simultaneously, would intensify the magnitude of the meltdown. If you have not had a chance to read the previous 2 parts here are the links to Part 1: US Debt and Part 2: Global banking System Meltdown.

Obama care has some serious risks associated with it. The obvious is that the hoards of people who are already supported by the government will be receiving health care at the expense of the productive citizens who pay taxes.  We have successfully added $6 trillion to the national debt since Obama was sworn into office. These additional costs will only add to the deficit which, in turn, will speed the pace at which our national debt grows out of control. Government assistance grew 23% under Obama’s first term. Nearly half of all Americans receive some type of government benefit. This is unsustainable and we are about to add to the staggering burden that our country is collapsing under. Now that I have stated the obvious, let’s look a little deeper.

In 2014, one of the most destructive  provisions of Obama Care kicks in. This provision forces employers of  businesses with more than 50 employees to provide health care to their workers who average 30 hours per week or more. If they don’t, the employer will be fined $3000 per employee. Let’s say you have a business that has managed to survive Obama’s first term. You presently have 65 employees. No one knows for sure how much the plans will cost, but let’s be extremely conservative and say $1500 per year. Realistically, that may purchase a high deductible plan that won’t satisfy Obama Care requirements. 65 employees times $1500 is $97,500.00. To a lot of small businesses, that is the margin they operate on. They have two choices; close the doors or lay off 16 employees to get under the 50 person threshold so they are not responsible for providing health care. Most will lay off  workers and downsize. This will happen over and over in thousands of businesses in America.

Other large business who can’t possibly get under the 50 person threshold will cut hours to get as many workers as possible under the 30 hour per week boundary. White Castle is considering cut backs and Darden Restaurants are already experimenting with utilizing part time workers rather than full time employees. Darden restaurants include Longhorn Steak House, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Bahama Breeze. Most all of the hourly employees at these chains will be capped at 28 hours per week. This trend will likely move throughout the service industry as restaurants and hotels depend on low labor costs to maintain margins. Any company that has been considering outsourcing customer service to India or other cheap labor countries will act to avoid these additional costs.  Unemployment and underemployment will sky rocket past depression era levels. Many people with full time work will find themselves with part time work and many more be unemployed entirely. Obama Care is an economic time bomb that we won’t survive.

At this point you may be thinking Prepper Recon has officially endorsed Mitt Romney. If you are a regular reader, you know that is not true. I voted for Ron Paul in the primaries and am sadden by our choices. This election is about defeating Obama Care and hopefully buying ourselves a few more years to wake up more of our fellow Americans. If we don’t vote for Romney, the collapse will be here sooner than many of us will be able to prepare for. Even if you are hunkered down and ready for TEOTWAWKI, every day there are new brothers and sisters waking up and joining the prepper movement. Think of them when you cast your vote. A few more years can make a huge differences in the amount of preppers who survive to help us rebuild. Dr Paul is retiring this year, but his ideas are not. If you have not read ” The Revolution” by Ron Paul, I encourage you to pick up a copy and pass it on when you are done. If we can bite the bullet and choose the lesser of two evils this time around, perhaps we will have a better choice in 2016.

Happy Prepping!

 

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Crossbows and Fletching Your Own Bolts

on October 10, 2012 at 3:50 am
Posted In: Prepping, Prepping on a Budget

Crossbows

crossbows

Crossbows are fun alternative weapons. You can often find crossbows on Craigslist at a reasonable price. Despite some drawbacks, crossbows have a few benefits that are worth noting. Thy are not firearms and may be easier to access in some areas, check your local laws. They are very quiet. If you are ever dependent on hunting to feed yourself, you may not want the rest of the world to hear you take down some big game. You can practice with them in your backyard, even in the city. As with any weapon, always be aware of what is beyond your target. Never fire in a direction where someone could be behind your target. Finally, cost of ammunition is very cheap, provided you can fletch your own bolts.

The biggest major drawback to a crossbow is reload time. It is certainly no match for an AR-15 which could empty a 30 round magazine before the crossbow gets off it’s second shot. The other big drawback is accuracy. The weight of the bolt causes a lot of drop and it is susceptible to wind, because of  the large profile of the bolt.

Fletching Your Own Bolts

crossbows

Taking your arrow or bolts to a shop to have fletched professionally will cost about $1 per bolt. This is pretty cheap if you don’t shoot a lot. Given you can lose a vane (feather) every other shot, it will add up fast. Fletching your own bolt requires very little expertise. Bohning makes a very easy to use fletching jig like the one in the picture for about $27.

The first step is to prepare your bolt by removing any excess adhesive from the previous vane.

crossbows

 

Next, you can place the vane in the guide and apply an adhesive like Fletch-tite evenly to the bottom. Then line up the guide on the jig. Allow it to set for about 2 minutes. Remove the guide, turn the base of the jig one click and repeat. Repeat once more and you will have all 3 vanes on your bolt. Allow the adhesive at least one hour to cure before shooting or stowing the bolt.

crossbows  crossbows

 

Another great project that is very cheap is to make your own quiver. This quiver was made using two Pringles cans, a length of para-cord and some digital camo duct tape. Cut out the bottom of one of your cans. Line up the bottomless can over the other can and connect with duct tape. Cover the rest of the surface with the duct tape. Make a couple holes and string  through enough para-cord to make a shoulder strap. I also put a quick coat of black spray paint on the lid, and there it is.

 

Make your crossbow tacti-cool by accessorizing it with a  flash light affixed with some electrical tape.

crossbows

 

You can purchase several different tips for your bolts. Broad heads typically have 3 or 4 razor type blades that come to a point. They are for large game and will stay in your target. There are regular target tips  for Styrofoam targets. The ones that look like a claw are made for small game, but work great for targets as they will not burrow deep into a home made plywood target. My target is a thick piece of plywood with several layers of cardboard attached with wood screws. Print out a free target from the web and you are ready to shoot. Always be safe and have fun.

 

Leave a comment and let us know what alternative weapons you use.

Happy Prepping!

 

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Marc Faber Interview- Financial Survival

on October 8, 2012 at 4:00 am
Posted In: Economy

Marc Faber Interview

Marc Faber

Dr. Marc Faber is an investor born in Switzerland and the publisher of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report. He holds a PhD in economics and serves as a director or an adviser on several investment funds.

In this interview with One Radio Network, Marc Faber discusses several threats to our economic future. Dr Faber speaks a bit on the role of the Federal Reserve. He says that the attempt by the Fed to prop up the housing market will not be as successful as they anticipate.  The Fed creates liquidity by constant quantitative easing which is electronic money printing. Once the liquidity has been created, there is no way to insure the money flows into the intended direction. In fact, much of the money has been flowing back into United States treasuries. This creates an unintended consequence of a treasury bubble.

Marc Faber goes on to comment on what he perceives to be a derivatives bubble. Several commentators have estimated the world derivatives market to be between $400 trillion and a quadrillion. Just when I got my mind around a trillion, I  have to mentally digest a quadrillion. Traders will tell you that despite its size, the derivatives market poses no threat to our financial system. They will tell you that it is a zero sum game, meaning that for every $1 bet  that a derivative will go up, there is a counter $1 bet that it will go down. Before 2008, we may have blindly believed them. In 2008, we learned that mega insurance agency AIG was writing Credit Default Swaps for much more downside risk than what they were able to cover. Since this act was considered by regulators to be mispricing of risk rather than criminal, they were bailed out rather than locked up. Since they were bailed out, the lesson learned was ” lose all the money you want, we’ll print more.” The free market has been prevented from being able to bring about the creative destruction that needs to occur in order to clear out bad investments to make room for the good. Now we have a derivatives time bomb that threatens to dwarf the 2008 crisis.

Mark Faber gives some good recommendations about protecting yourself from market volatility. He recommends diversity and hard assets as the future is so uncertain. Marc Faber has long been a believer in owning gold to manage risks from inflation and currency collapse.

Leave us a comment and let us know what you thought of the Marc Faber interview. Also let us know your favorite financial advisers.

Happy Prepping!

 

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Sunday Prepper Bible Study- The Ant and the Grasshopper

on October 7, 2012 at 4:34 am
Posted In: Bible

Sunday Prepper Bible Study- The Ant and the Grasshopper

bible

Proverbs 6:6-8 says “Go tot the ant you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.”

Proverbs 30:25 tells us a little bit about their ways. It says “Ants are creatures of little strength,
yet they store up their food in the summer”.

The story of “the Ant and the Grasshopper” is an age old fable written by Aesop. It seems we hear it less now than before in America; perhaps we have changed our narrative for the worse. Perhaps we have turned into a society of grasshoppers who think they have outsmarted the ants and the story no longer applies. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it goes like this:

Once there lived an ant and a grasshopper in a grassy meadow.

ant All day long the ant would work hard, collecting grains of wheat from the farmer’s field far away. She would hurry to the field every morning, as soon as it was light enough to see by, and toil back with a heavy grain of wheat balanced on her head. She would put the grain of wheat carefully away in her larder, and then hurry back to the field for another one. All day long she would work, without stop or rest, scurrying back and forth from the field, collecting the grains of wheat and storing them carefully in her larder.

The grasshopper would look at her and laugh. ‘Why do you work so hard, dear ant?’ he would say. ‘Come, rest a while, listen to my song. Summer is here, the days are long and bright. Why waste the sunshine in labor and toil?’

grasshopperThe ant would ignore him, and head bent, would just hurry to the field a little faster. This would make the grasshopper laugh even louder. ‘What a silly little ant you are!’ he would call after her. ‘Come, come and dance with me! Forget about work! Enjoy the summer! Live a little!’ And the grasshopper would hop away across the meadow, singing and dancing merrily.

Summer faded into autumn, and autumn turned into winter. The sun was hardly seen, and the days were short and grey, the nights long and dark. It became freezing cold, and snow began to fall.

The grasshopper didn’t feel like singing any more. He was cold and hungry. He had nowhere to shelter from the snow, and nothing to eat. The meadow and the farmer’s field were covered in snow, and there was no food to be had. ‘Oh what shall I do? Where shall I go?’ wailed the grasshopper. Suddenly he remembered the ant. ‘Ah – I shall go to the ant and ask her for food and shelter!’ declared the grasshopper, perking up. So off he went to the ant’s house and knocked at her door. ‘Hello ant!’ he cried cheerfully. ‘Here I am, to sing for you, as I warm myself by your fire, while you get me some food from that larder of yours!’

The ant looked at the grasshopper and said, ‘All summer long I worked hard while you made fun of me, and sang and danced. You should have thought of winter then! Find somewhere else to sing, grasshopper! There is no warmth or food for you here!’ And the ant shut the door in the grasshopper’s face.

It is wise to worry about tomorrow today.

I think as we look around, our economy is showing us signs that winter is coming soon. The advice of God’s word is just as applicable today as it was when it was written. The verses tell us to learn from the ant who stores up provisions for itself when there are provisions to be had. There is no promise that we will have the abundant selections at the super market tomorrow. There is no promise that we will have the luxury of running water or a common currency. So look to the ant and prepare for tomorrow.

As preppers, we often break our operational security to try to motivate others to prepare. Even those that agree that the system is unsustainable are rarely ready to do any thing about it. We regularly hear ” I am coming to your house when it all goes down.” That is when I tell them the ant and the grasshopper story. Unfortunately, some people are going to be grasshoppers. You can plan to help some of them, but the reality is you won’t be able to help them all.

As Christians, we will often hear “God will take care of us if everything breaks down”. That is the perfect time to say:  “He already has. He has given us the Bible that teaches us to be prepared.” Over and over, we hear the call to be prepared in the Bible and especially in the book of Proverbs. Our responsibility starts with our own household. To put our family in jeopardy by giving away the provisions we have set aside for them is wrong. The Bible says in I Timothy 5:8 “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Plan to put away as much as you can to help others, but remember your family is your first priority.

We can also take away quite a bit from Proverbs 30:25.  It tells us that ants are small and not very strong. Even thought they can carry several times their own weight, they are very limited by their size and strength. What they lack in physical ability, they more than make up for in diligence. Through their wisdom and planing, they are able to persevere through the winter despite their limitations. Maybe your limitations are a tight budget. By buying few extra items each time you go to the grocery, you can quickly build  a great stock pile. Using coupons will really help as well. Check out our Coupon Corner to learn how or to get tips on improving your couponing skills.

God is in the habit of providing for us when we can’t, but He gave us the Bible which tells us to do what we can when we can. Read our comprehensive 7 Step Preparedness Plan to learn how to be more like the ant and build a foundation for readiness.

Happy Prepping!

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