Mormons and Emergency Preparedness: the Corona Virus Edition

by admin March 23, 2020 Post Comment

If you want to survive any type of apocalypse…

Join forces with your Mormon neighbors! They have everything a person and their pet needs to survive for about a month. They are amazing at emergency preparedness.

My parents are Mormons, my grandparents are Mormons, my great grandparents were Mormons, and my great great grandparents were Mormons!

I’m pretty sure being a Mormon is actually embedded in my DNA. All growing up, I would go to the Relief Society activities with my mom. One of their favorite activities was making emergency kits, emergency food storage, and other general emergency preparedness things. It’s just what we do.

I’m so Mormon I even cosplay as a Pioneer and willfully dragged a handcart with a bunch of other teenagers across the desert.

Mormons are prepared for the worst, both spiritually and temporally. That emergency preparedness mindset comes from the Church’s guidance and hard-won lessons throughout scriptural history.

Emergency preparedness was first addressed in the book of Genesis in the story of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

In Genesis 41 you learn that Joseph is in prison. While he is there, the Pharoh has a dream that troubles him. No one in his court can translate it until a butler shares with the Pharoh that a prisoner translated his dream correctly. Pharoh summons Joseph to translate his dream.

To read the part mentioned above read this; Genesis 41:14-36. Below, I have highlighted the translation.

29 Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt:
30 And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land;
31 And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous.
Genesis 41:29-31

And it came to pass that this dream was fulfilled. Pharoh put Joseph in charge of emergency preparedness. Joseph stock piled food resources for 7 years to sustain the population for the famine that followed.

Those emergency preparedness lessons continued to be taught in modern times.

As early as the the 1800’s, prophets were admonishing the public and the church members to be prepared.

Prophets in recent years have indulged the same admonition…

My parents, with the support of church leaders, have always encouraged me and my siblings to avoid debt, to save money, to be ready for ‘years of famine’, and help others in need. I’m not great at it, but I know to do it!

When I moved to Alaska, my mom made sure to put an emergency back pack in my car. I haven’t used it, but I still have it!

When the Corona Virus pandemic reached the United States, our family was prepared.

Now, obviously we are not perfect. I was one of those people gaping at the empty Costco shelves in disbelief. And we feel the financial strain of not working. But the outpouring of help from other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been unbelievably inspirational.

The church organization has been helping with Corona Virus relief around the world. It was one of the first organizations to respond to the pandemic, delivering medical supplies to China back in January 2020. The Salt Lake Tribune reported the church was sending two planes worth of protective equipment to the Children’s Medical Center in Shanghai.

The Church continues it’s humanitarian efforts in places like Chile where they are converting temporarily vacant chapels into relief hospitals.

Not only that, as a Church, we are prepared spiritually.

In light of the spread of the Corona Virus, the church leadership has chosen to cancel Sunday sacrament sessions and church activities indefinitely. But our members are prepared with gospel lessons to teach our families at home.

In 2018, President Russel M. Nelson made an unexpected shift in the Church’s philosophy. Instead of being church-centered and home-supported, he boldly declared that members should begin looking at our personal worship and discipleship as “home-centered and church-supported”. It was a slight shift that members welcomed, simply from the perspective of taking more personal accountability.

Now, 18 months later, President Nelson’s directive feels truly prophetic. 18 months ago, who could have predicted that the entire world would be quarantined?

And, boy, are we grateful for his insight. Nobody likes being told to stay at home while business evaporates and the confirmed cases grow. Yet because of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ emergency preparedenss preparations, we are comfortable and ready to weather this storm, temporally and spiritually.

We pray for you and your loved ones, knowing that, with God’s help, we can get through this, no matter what. Hopefully, this be a wake up call to love and support one another. To respect the new restrictions in place, and to move forward with a new found appreciation for emergency preparedness.

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