If you follow this blog or attend our church you've heard me talk about the word "prepare". As the new year approached I kept hearing "prepare" in my spirit and my wife and I have been looking at all areas of our life to see how we could better "prepare" for each.

In light of the disaster in Haiti we are looking even closer at our own emergency preparedness. We live near Seattle and people here think about earthquakes. We realized that in many ways we're ready to care for ourselves for longer than the obligatory 2-3 days but we're not prepared for some things.

We have a water purifier used globally by missionaries that can take mud puddles and make them drinkable but we have no stored water. We have a food supply but it's gone beyond the expiration dates. In a disaster we would eat it but we can do something about it now. Our first aid kit needs to be updated as well.

We have a generator and other means to make life more tolerable during a true emergency but we don't have enough gasoline to run it. Even though we've thought through this before we've become lax and haven't kept things up to date. We will be rectifying that in the next few days.

We used to have a tent but sold it. We need to purchase another one in case our home is not safe to live in.

We also realized that even though we have enough for ourselves we would quickly be depleted if we tried to help others. We are going to make provision for as many as we can afford.

Please help the people of Haiti (see the previous post). And, please take care of your potential emergency needs as well. At the very least have enough provisions to last for a week. In a real emergency it may take that long for help to arrive.

Don't be a burden to others later if you have the means to prepare today.