Thoughts on a Thursday

As I looked at this photo my heart broke at the fear and despair on this woman's face. I want to be able to hold and comfort her but that of course is not possible. What I can do though is support those who are able to be there helping. Yes, there are a lot of scam organizations set up to primarily benefit financially from these horrific events, but there is a way to get your donations to the right people.
If you are considering donating to a cause check out their financial stats. They have to state how much of donated money and goods go to the actual relief efforts and not just administrative costs. If they can't give you those numbers, don't donate. There are so many good organizations set up to help during tragic events including the Red Cross, Catholic Social Services and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Humanitarian Aid and Emergency Response Teams. It's good to know that if I donate anything to my church 100% of it will go to those in need. If you have an organization you support please feel free to list that here. We can all do much good during this time as we work together. I know for a fact that those working down in Haiti to help restore some sense of normalcy don't care what organization or church you belong to, and I'm sure those being helped don't either.
I pray the earthquakes will stop and that the relief efforts won't be hampered. I pray that we will know how we can best help from our own little corner of the world. I pray for those who think that our prayers don't matter. Oh yes, I actually had someone tweet that the other day, that prayer doesn't matter. I pray for the comfort and peace that comes from the Savior to warm the hearts and calm the fears of the afflicted. May God bless us all to do the right thing.

Coincidences....are they really?

I recently changed roles at church, I went from being Young Women President in our branch, to Enrichment counselor in our District. That means I will be helping all the Enrichment counselors in each branch set up their programs and gear them towards the needs of our sisters and families. We are planning a Back to Basics inspired program as there are so many of the
new young adult and not so young, that are lacking in basic home making skills and preparedness. So each month as a district we will be hosting classes on food storage and emergency preparation, basic cooking from scratch and using that food storage, basic sewing with an emphasis on saving money through knowing how to mend, alter, or re-purpose a piece of clothing. We will also hopefully inspire women to get back to sewing clothing as it can be so rewarding and if done correctly can be a wise way to save. Gardening is another huge area we need to approach, and what to do with all that extra food such as canning and so forth. We also want to encourage our ladies to develop their talents so we will be offering classes on personal and spiritual development. I was so happy when they called me to this position as it is my passion, besides art.
So where do the coincidences come in? Well, look at the economy and you tell me! I have to give Michelle Obama praise, even though I would love to call her husband on the carpet, but that's another topic for another day. Anyway, Mrs. Obama has planted a vegetable garden and is encouraging all of us to plant one as well. Finally, someone at the White House who has a clue!
So being given this calling gives me a platform to really be able to hopefully inspire others to "get er' done!" as they say. So I was looking for a notebook to keep my handbook and other important stuff in and found my preparedness binder which was put together by the Enterprise, Oregon Ward Relief Society. Yay! I have a myriad of information at my finger tips and its ready to copy. To add to this, I was sent to a NIMS training yesterday as a member of our city council. NIMS stands for National Incident Management System. 3 things I learned were, Hurricane Katrina would have been less devastating if Louisiana and New Orleans had had this system in place. They let their people down! Don't look to the Feds to bail you out when you haven't done all you should to be prepared. That's my opinion by the way, and we were urged to get our communities ready for any disaster by encouraging families to have 72 or 96 hour emergency kits for each member of the family, and having them have in place emergency plans such as re-unification in case of earthquake, fire or flood, and fire drills. They told us the best way for a community to get prepared was to start with the families. So I'm thinking that we need to offer these ideas to such organizations as Holy Cross Ministries, as the Catholic church is most prominent here with our 85% hispanic population, and to contact the other couple of churches and see if they want to participate as well. We could start with the 72 hour kits. We live in an earthquake zone, and if Salt Lake City ever has a big one, we will be like the tail of the blanket or towel that gets flipped, and catch a good portion of the destruction. So, the economy, the calling, and the training are all related in such a way as to let me know we are expected to get going on this.
A lot of local phone books have some info on disaster preparedness, and you can find info on the web, but if you are interested, I can email you what I have and we can go from there. I will be looking for pertinent sites to add to my link list, and if you have one to share please leave a note here. Thanks!