Quorum of Teachers
Setting Up a Home Storehouse
First step in building a Storehouse is get your Finances under control.
Setting up a storehouse in your own home may sound like a difficult task, but eating an elephant sounds difficult too. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Plan, start small, plan for a week of extra food. Seven morning meals, seven noon time meals and seven evening meals and fourteen snacks, also plan beverages. A good rule of thumb is one gallon of water a day per person.
What’s that? You don’t have money to set up your storehouse. OK, so you first have to tell your money what to do. This may sound like Dave Ramsey because it is my experience from following his method.
To do this you write down all of your incomes on a list and all of your out goings on a separate list. This is your budget. (This will also help when doing your tithing statement. Funny how doing your tithing statement will help you to keep track of your money. Seems like it was planned that way doesn’t it?) The income has to be greater than the outgoing to be a viable operation. If not you are just creating debt. This is the opposite of what you want.
So you now get receipts every time you buy something, if you don’t get one write down the date, what you bought, where you bought it, and what you spent. This may seem like a pain and it will be painful when you see all the money you waste, but the peace you get once you are in control of your money is priceless.
Now you take a hard look at your out goings. You are looking for things you can cut out or at least reduce.
Do you really need to spend that much on a phone? You can and I did for years use a “Pay as You Go” phone. No it wasn’t the latest gadget phone but, I could make and receive calls and texts.
How often do you eat out? If you cook at home you can control the quality of the food you eat more closely and reduce the cost at the same time. If you can’t cook, take classes and start learning, make an investment in yourself.
Do you spend more that you need on Internet service? You can go to the library for free Internet service. Yes I know it’s not convenient but it will save you money. And yes for a time I used the library Internet.
Do you pay for a TV subscription? TV is still available free off the air, I still use a rabbit ear antenna setup to watch TV. There just isn’t much on that I want to watch anymore.
Do you really need a car payment? I buy used cars that I can pay cash for. A car that I am currently driving I paid $2500 for and then fixed up all of the small problems it had, and have been driving it for about 5 years. At more than 265,000 miles it is still running fine.
Do you have bad habits that you should quit? Smoking, Power Ball tickets, that Five Bucks cup of coffee. Smoking is bad both health wise and financially, so cut it out. If you add up what you have won on Power Ball tickets and compare it to what you spend you would usually be money ahead not buying that ticket, more people lose money than make money. Where do you think the money from Power Ball for the schools come from?
Do you buy water or other drinks? Buy a Thermos or a water bottle and fill it at home. You can filter the water and have the same thing you pay more than five dollars a gallon for, for pennies.
Do you use a credit card to buy things? Unless you pay it off every month this costs you money. Even if you pay it off, you may still buy more than you need to just because it is convenient.
If you look hard enough you will find things you can live without or that you can reduce spending on.
OK take a deep breath, that was a lot of work. Now that you have a budget to follow you are going to live on cash. This means you don’t carry your credit card or checkbook with you, you carry cash. If you run out of cash you don’t buy anything else. I do carry a debt card for emergency use only.
Now that you have some money freed up in the budget you work on a week of food and water. Remember “Store What You Eat and Eat What You Store”. An easy way to do this is to buy extra of what you normally buy, this is called “Copy Canning”. Even if you only buy one can of food a week you are ahead of those who don’t buy any.
This brings us to an Emergency Fund as the name indicates for use only in an emergency, not for an “I Want Emergencies” but, “I have to have Emergencies” (The car is broken down, emergency Doctor bill, the roof is leaking)
You start by saving up $1000 as your Emergency Fund. Don’t touch this money for anything less than an emergency.
If you have debt you start with the smallest debt and pay as much as you can on it every month until it is paid off, then you go to the next debt until you have them all paid off except a house (that is usually a big chunk of change). You then increase your Emergency Fund to $5000 or what ever level you are comfortable with. Then you pay your monthly payment on the house and you pay as much as you can on the principal each month.
Once you are debt free you put money away for the future. This is a very good spot to be in. You start investing in retirement, your education and your children’s education or what ever is important to you.
Bulldogging your wild spending into a tamed budget, can take some time but, it is very much worth while. It helps to finance a stabler way of life and gives you the opportunity to live better and with more freedom than you may imagine. While freeing up money to invest in your store house for the lean times.
Aaronic Priesthood Retreat 2017
Friday February 24th
Saturday February 25th
Sunday February 26th
There was a strong Spirit present at the retreat. I would like to thank all of the Prayer Warriors that prayed for the preparation, the travel to and from and for the retreat itself. Your prayers were answered in abundance. The Aaronic Priesthood was joined by members of the Presiding Elders and other members of the Melchisedec Priesthood including the First Presidency and the Quorum of Seventy. Their presence was a blessing to the retreat.
Starting on Friday night we had Introductions and an explanation of the weekends agenda. We gathered for a prayer circle (prayers were voluntary as lead by the spirit). The evening class was the next item covered, Bishop Richard Paris and Rebecca Ault Paris taught how to create a Personal Mission Statement and we each worked on creating our own Mission Statement. We then closed out the evening out with Fellowship and snacks.
Saturday morning started with Breakfast then onto Introductions and an Ice Breaker. The first of two morning classes taught by Richard and Rebecca Paris was on Communication Styles,. Each member of the class answered a questionnaire to help determine their communication style. The second class was on Whole Brain Thinking, we did an exercise to help us to understand how each of us tend to think. These classes were very informative and engaging, learning and fun was had by all. We then broke for lunch.
After lunch, we had Introductions for the afternoon and another Ice Breaker to energize us. There were two workshops in the afternoon for each of the Quorums with members from the Melchisedec Priesthood joining into each of the Quorum Workshops, they brought a great insight to each of the workshops. The Deacon's first workshop was "Enter in at the Gate" and the second was "The Altar of Sacrifice". The Teachers first workshop was on "Conflict Resolution" and the second was on "The Six Foundations of the Gospel".The Priests first class was "Public Ministry - The Path of Sanctification" and the Second was "The Priest and the Family". Each Quorum provided a debriefing of there two classes. This was followed by Sister Rebecca Paris leading a class titled "Advocating for your Brother". We then broke for dinner.
Following dinner we sat quietly in meditation for a period of time then concluded our day in a preparation Service. We then broke for the Day.
Sunday morning a light breakfast was offered some chose to fast. Our Communion Service started our day off right. And the Retreat was concluded with a Dedication Service and the sharing of Mission Statements by those so inclined. As always the weekend was to short.
I believe that the feeling of the Strong Spirit and the Love of Christ was shared by all.
I would like to thank all the ladies and gentlemen who served in the background so that we would have the opportunity to have this 2017 Aaronic Priesthood Retreat.
I would like to welcome two new members to the Quorum of Teachers Alex Tibbitts of Skiatook, Oklahoma and Isaiah Woods of Independence, Missouri. These young men amazed me with the spirit that they each carry with them. At their age I was stumbling around trying to find my way, and not doing a very good job of it. I look forward to working with each of them. I have high expectations for their ministries.
