Prepare: FOLLOW THE PROPHET!!

This has been on my mind so much recently!!

A lot of people have been feeling promptings to prepare--prepare food storage, water storage, clothing storage, all the rest. A lot of people have been feeling prompted to study the Biblical calendar--leading them to study things like the Shemitah and upcoming Jubilee, the Biblical blood moon tetrad, and so forth.

And a lot of people aren't feeling those things.

And that is okay.

The amazing thing about the Restored Gospel is that we have a prophet--a prophet like Moses or Noah or Peter or Abraham, who receives regular communication from the Lord about what the Church needs at any given time. No one has to know about the Hebrew calendar or something; no one even really needs to be prompted specifically to start getting their food storage together. The modern prophets have been urging us to prepare temporally since the Restoration. And we know that before anything gets really bad, the prophets will warn us and take care of us.

I guess the thing that's been on my mind is that temporal preparation is important--it truly is. But even more important is developing a testimony that is strong enough to follow the Prophet no matter what he tells us to do or when.

I was reading in the book The Gift of Giving Life, which is awesome and you should buy it and read it, and it talked about the pioneer women who birthed their children while crossing the plains on foot. This
is what Eliza R. Snow wrote about these women:

Let it be remembered that the mothers of these wilderness born babes were not savages accustomed to roam the forest and brave the storm and tempest--those who had never known the comforts and delicacies of civilization and refinement. They were not those who in the wilds of nature nursed their offspring amid reeds and rushes or in the recesses of rocky caverns. Most of them were born and educated in the eastern states... had gathered with the saints... had lovely homes decorated with flowers and enriched with choice fruit trees just beginning to yield plentifully. 

When I read that, I thought: what faith. Women just like me. Kind of. So they didn't have running water and indoor plumbing. They still gave up their outhouses in favor of peeing on the side of the trail. They still gave up their pretty houses in favor of living in the wilderness. They still gave up birthing their children in a warm home in favor of giving birth in the mud, in the rain, in the desert.

Because the prophet said to.

Do we have that kind of faith?

It doesn't matter if the prophet tells us to gather in the wilderness or not--what matters is that we have the faith to trust him if he does, or if he doesn't. Who knows. Maybe all these promptings to prepare are just to try our faith. Maybe nothing will happen for a year, a decade, a century or more. Who knows.

All I know is: the important thing is our faith. Do we have the faith to follow no matter what? That is the important thing.

Develop your faith! Follow the prophet!!