Serve and support each other

As most of you know I teach emergency preparedness and have visited with many people throughout the Valley from all walks of life — homeless, poor, elderly, youth, businesses, civic leaders, etc.

Many are struggling in many ways and I have truly considered what could be done. This is what I have found and encourage in all of us:

The homeless, poor and fatherless are cold, hungry, want to work, love their families and need our support and friendship. We are all here on this earth to do just that.

Invite them into your homes to feel warm for a little while. Serve them a hot, wholesome meal with whole foods — they don’t have them very often. Let someone help with your yard or wash your car. It is important to feel useful and work maintains self-respect and abilities, while government assistance disables and diminishes a person’s self-respect. Some need a hot shower or laundry.

This is a time of simplifying life. Not many have finances to pay for the things they need. Trade your services/talents with each other as our ancestors did — that is how we will be living during the Millennium and they are gifts from God, not for profit.

Have hand tools and supplies at home to be completely self-reliant — such as hand saws and mauls to harvest wood, picks and shovels to dig gardens and latrines. Have candles and matches instead of sources requiring fuels. What would you do without electricity/fuel if it were completely unavailable right now indefinately? How would you obtain water from your well? Learn how to remove your pump. There are modifications you can do to carborated and diesel engines that enable them to burn alcohol or vegetable oils.

Develop pioneer crafting and living skills — make your own bread with your own hands, sew, knit, crochet, weave, garden, raise poultry/livestock, be debt-free, live organically in all aspects: compost, use Castile soap/vinegar/baking soda/borax to clean, do laundry, shower, etc. Although you may not have a lot of room to raise a garden, still store Seedstrust.com seeds to be able to. They are organic, non-hybrid and specific for high altitude and short season. Have, and know how to use, a rifle/bow/fishing tools to obtain food. Be happy with living simply — that is where happiness is, with family, not in having things or money. Your children and youth want and need righteous fathers and mothers, love, nutrition, security and boundaries.

Use whole, organic, non-hybrid/GMO foods and herbs for health and healing. You receive complete nutrition, you eat less,and have health. This is the only way we will accomplish health care reform — by living healthy. Unhealthy living only profits the producer of it.

Educate yourself from the scriptures, classics and craft/skills manuals to know truth, be edified, self-reliant and to discern error/evil.

Truly think of how the pioneers lived. My goal is to reinstill family and community self-reliance and unity to stand on our own two feet and help each other. When we are there is no need for fear and “looters” would not exist. Obedience and pure hearts are what the Savior requires now and when He comes. The sooner we get it the faster He will come.

“We are God’s children and if we ever get that through our heads thoroughly and understood that completely, we would never do a small thing, we would never say a cross word, we would not use bad language. We would not criticize anybody. We would love everyone the way the Savior loves us,” Marjorie Pay Hinckley.

“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him,” Abraham Lincoln, 1862.

“For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is not greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth,” Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace.”

If I have ever said or done anything to offend anyone it was unintended and I sincerely ask your forgiveness.

Take care, have a great day, smile and say hello to everyone, and serve and support each other. That is what America is.

Niki Taysom is a Palmer resident