As most of you may know (but some of you may not) the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages us to store a 3 month supply of food that is part of my families normal diet, as well as a establish a long term food supply. (Click here if you want to read more.) Because I know that there are blessing that come from obedience, even in temporal things, I have been working over the last several years, to obtain and maintain our family's supply. After Hurricane Sandy, my commitment to re-supply and make sure I had everything for our 3 month supply was renewed.
After working on this the last 4 months I had just about everything gathered and organized, with a rotation system in place. The last thing I need to do was to inventory and organize my freezer. My freezer has been needing to be defrosted for over a month now. Since today was grocery shopping day, I decided that I would defrost the freezer, inventory it, compare my current inventory to what I knew I needed to store, note the deficiencies and then put everything back in my freezer in a manner in which it will allow me to store everything, find everything, and rotate my supply.
With my list of deficiencies, I set off to do my weekly grocery shopping, My largest deficiency was in meat, which I knew it would be. I decided that I would purchase everything that was not meat, and then purchase all of the meat on my inventory that was in stock at the price I am willing to pay for it. I was prepared for my grocery bill to be large but had decided that, what ever the cost, I was going to do this.
I was shocked when the total for my grocery bill came up on the register as $151 and some cents. I knew that I had just witnessed a miracle. You see, our weekly budget for groceries is $150. (That in itself is a miracle.) This week I bought our weekly groceries (minus about $20 of produce that I need to go pick up at Costco later this week) along with ...are you ready...
3 lbs of frozen vegetables, 8 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts, 6 lbs of hamburger, 3 lbs of sausage, 7 lbs of shredded cheese, 8 lbs of margarine, and 2 lbs of frozen fruit.
As I drove away from the store, my heart was full. It was all I could do to hold back tears of gratitude. I could feel the spirit witness to me that we were being blessed for our obedience.
When I think about the future of this world and our country, and how things are going, I often get scared or overwhelmed. I told a dear friend this morning...I can not worry. I am going to just keep doing everything that I have been taught I should be doing along with everything that I feel I should be doing, and then things will be "okay". I don't know what "okay" is, or what "okay" looks like, but I have faith that we will be "okay". Today's trip to the grocery store confirmed that. Obedience brings blessings, and we are going to be okay.
