It’s a new month and that means a new family challenge!
(I will debrief February’s challenge later this week.)
My husband and I tossed around the idea of focusing on gratitude for the month — playing off of St. Patrick’s Day and luck. We also thought about focusing on mental health since we have some struggles in our home right now. And the alliteration of Mental Health March almost convinced me to do it.
But in the end, my husband and I decided we wanted our March Family Focus to be Preparedness.
First, I’m just a little uneasy with the elections and the lack of character and integrity there. Who knows where are country will be this time next year? Second, my 72-hour emergency plan used to consist of different ways to get to my mom’s house. But now that we’ve moved farther away and up a canyon, I need to be more self-sufficient. Third, our power went out last month at night, and it showed me many ways I am not prepared. Lastly, I blame my unease on Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Crew and I read it together this year and it was a wake-up call for all of our luxuries.
“But if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear” (D&C 38:30) so it’s time to get moving.
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This month’s Family Challenge is a series of things to do that will help us get prepared for any kind of natural or personal disasters. Here is a list we generated on our family brainstorming session:
- Fill up water containers (We emptied them when we moved and have yet to fill them back up.)
- Pick up food storage from Thrive (I ordered several cases of food storage from Thrive at their Black Friday sale and have yet to pick them up.)
- Organize food storage room in the house.
- Update 72-hr kits.
- Check batteries in flashlights and gather them all in one spot.
- Put together car preparedness kit. (The canyon near our town has been closed for multiple hours more than once this year. We were reminded that even our car needs to be ready in case we are stuck in an incident.)
- Get first-aid kit for car.
There are several other things we could add to the list, but I am trying to be realistic about what can be done in a month’s time with a busy family.
We also decided that we wanted to be spiritually prepared for whatever life throws our way, so I proposed that we commit to reading our scriptures as a family together EVERY DAY in March. We were all skeptical if we could do it or not. The kids were particularly hung up on Saturday. They couldn’t see how we could read together when we are all going our separate ways with sports and dance and friends. Chad proposed reading Sunday-Thursday as an alternative goal.
As we continued to talk about March’s challenge, we remembered that these are Family CHALLENGES, and they are supposed to stretch us and make us do hard things. So after some time for the idea to sit, we agreed we would aim to have family scripture study every day in March.
(After all, we started the Book of Mormon in 2013. It is about time we finished it!)
This challenge will definitely challenge us. I am hoping, like the “No Eating Out” Challenge, that we will get creative and find ways to make it work. We will think outside the box and our own limitations. We may find ourselves reading in the car, reading over FaceTime or reading in the middle of the day, but we will be reading.
I’ll have to print out a calendar or something so we can mark our reading and see our consistency.
**UPDATE: I talked with my children about how they would like to record our family scripture reading challenge. We decided that we wanted to see something go away rather than see something fill up like we did with the jar of conversation hearts. That’s when Croft had the great idea to keep track with a paper chain.
She got right on it and made a chain with 31 one links, and we will cut one off each time we read. If we have any links left then we know we didn’t read every day. We are keeping the chain right by our scripture reading basket along with a pair of scissors.**
I’m hoping that spiritual habits will be set and that we will be further prepared to face whatever may come.
Wish us luck!