When Granite Shakes....Be Ready To Roll!

"The revelation to produce and store food may be as essential to our temporal welfare today as boarding the ark was to the people in the days of Noah.”

I have been working for months as the food chairman for our Granite View Stake Preparedness Fair which was held Sat. April 14th. About a year ago, Joan Nelson (the Stake Relief Society President) and I (her Education Counselor...we have since been released) (and Dan Gomez, the High Councilman over Family Preparedness and Leisa Root, also the Stake Specialist) attended a similar fair in South Jordan called "Returning to Egypt." It was so marvelous and our Stake wanted to put one on. I made the mistake of telling our Stake President that he got to dress up like Joseph of Egypt and exhort people from a ladder....and the next thing I knew, that "theme" was caboshed! But, oh well, you can still have a great production without everyone dressing up in costume......

Although Joan and I were released, I still had the food assignment. Which, if it has to do with food, I’m IN! It has all just been the most wonderful experience to get to work with some people I had never met....like Shauna and Jim Rohbock. Well, Jim scared me at the first meeting but Shauna won me at hello! What a doll! She’s this little petite fireball....you should see her puff up her 5 foot frame and coerce people into giving freebies for giveaways! I was totally impressed! The advertising was the best I’ve ever seen and Sherrie Wilkinson was in charge of the decorating and it was unbelievable. The colors were all black and white, bronze and silver- with the entire church filled with "preparedness" quotations. Very motivating! Our Ward was in charge of the Year supply area and Allison Gibbons did an amazing job! Besides the display, she had a hand mill where kids could grind some wheat to see how long it took. Brenda Bailey was also over that area and she and her husband, Bob, did a video of us at the dry pack cannery, looking oh-so-stupid in our cute canning outfits....(what you don’t do for the people you visiting teach!)....anyway, the video was part of their display.

We had several tasting tables set up with cute Young Women passing out samples of various foods: whole wheat banana bread, oatmeal whole wheat cake, reconstituted refried beans from the cannery, a sausage rice casserole made entirely with freeze-dried food, orange Julius made from the cannery dried milk and fruit drink. We also had Brandi’s wonderful peanut butter popcorn. Jan England is our Young Women’s President and she was so wonderful to volunteer for all her girls to not only make all the popcorn, but to come on Sat. and spend the ENTIRE day (from set-up at 9:30 to 4:40 and clean-up!) to help serve. The girls were darling and we honestly couldn’t have done it without them! Jan was happy to have the service opportunity, but for me, it was an answer to prayer.

Right now, it is late Sunday evening, and the radio is playing in the other room- a beautiful rendition of "A Child’s Prayer." It is so funny that it would be playing right as I’m talking about the Young Women because that is the song we always sang at girl’s camp...and it always made me cry. Whenever I am in the car driving, and stressed, I always sing this song....the words are wonderful...."Heavenly Father...are you really there? Do you hear and answer every child’s prayer...." I have felt his sweet arms around me all during this assignment. I felt prompted to attend a class at Macey’s grocery store...a cooking class on using dehydrated milk. I was so blown away by the class and the teacher, Maureen Knapp, and amazed at the things I learned...really, how easy it is to make yogurt, cream cheese and cottage cheese from your dehydrated milk! We did teach classes at the fair and Maureen was going to teach that particular one but at the last minute, she couldn’t get out of previous responsibilities so I ended up teaching it. She was so cute to encourage me and we have spent hours talking about all preparedness issues. I feel like I made a new friend! I also taught my regular classes on "Store What You Eat/Eat What You Store" and they went well. Brendalyn Baer, Debbie Stowell, Libby Hargrove and Diane Mortensen, all dear friends, helped me out in the kitchen and we all ran our heads off. These things are so much work but it turned out such a great success....I think we really did have about 1500 people come....and in the case of an emergency, that is 1500 more people who will be prepared to know what to do! It was almost sad for it to be all over. Shauna and I were finishing cleaning the kitchen, and as I always do, when things settle down and the people are gone, it was just a special moment...I wanted to just talk to Heavenly Father quietly and thank him for helping everything to go smoothly and everyone to work well together. I just felt so blessed to have met Shauna and to work again with Leisa and Chris Root, Dan Gomez and the others. What great people I always get to associate with. How lucky I always have been to get the opportunity to serve. This is my last "big project" on the agenda and I’m going to be a little lost for awhile.......

              A Child's Prayer
Heavenly Father, are you really there?
And do you hear and answer ev’ry child’s prayer?
Some say that heaven is far away,
But I feel it close around me as I pray.
Heavenly Father, I remember now
Something that Jesus told disciples long ago:
“Suffer the children to come to me.”
Father, in prayer I’m coming now to thee.

Pray, he is there; Speak, he is list’ning.
You are his child; His love now surrounds you.
He hears your prayer; He loves the children.
Of such is the kingdom, the kingdom of heav’n.

Words and music: Janice Kapp Perry, b. 1938© 1984 by Janice Kapp Perry.