A Two Week Experiment...

Two years since my last blog? Seriously? I have never, EVER been good about journaling consistently. Looks like electronic journaling isn't much of an improvement. Still, here goes another attempt. For the next two weeks, at least, I'll be blogging each day.

One of my friends offered a challenge on her Facebook page: for two weeks, eat only from what you have on hand: pantry, freezer, etc. For some reason, this intrigued me and I thought it would be fun to try. Afterall, my pantry could use some cleaning out. After more thought, though, I've decided it's much more significant than that.

First, as member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, we have been encouraged for as long as I can remember to be prepared for future hardships--whether personal or widespread--by having a year supply of food and other necessities. We have not done that perfectly, but we have some basics on hand. I've never really thought about whether we could truly live on it or not. Probably not. So, this two week challenge seemed like a great way to assess whether or not we could get by for a mere two weeks. We all know what difficult economic times our nation is experiencing. The reality of the recession has hit us personally. Just three weeks ago, Alden did not receive his paycheck as expected due to financial setbacks of the company he works for. Fortunately, he received his salary about a week later, and we were fine in the meantime. However, it certainly made me think about the "what ifs" of our finances.

Second, Jana recently spent some time volunteering at St. Mary's food bank. It was a humbling and eye-opening experience for her. Their group prepared various vegetables for distribution packs, and the people at St. Mary's told them that the food they had prepared would help over 1,000 hungry people. Much more of an impact was made, though, when she saw the truck drivers (who were people in need of work) devouring celery they had cleaned and cut up.

Can we really imagine what it would be like to truly be without the necessities of life? What if we really had to live on whatever we had on hand. What if a job loss meant no more liquid cash? What if a blizzard made it impossible to get to the store? Granted, this is Arizona, so that's not very likely--but I do remember in our Utah days there was a snow storm so bad in that we were homebound for a bit (okay, less than 48 hours, but still...) Can we relate to the many, many people who truly have so little during this holiday season? For this reason, and the others mentioned above, we've decided to give this experiment a full go. I'm excited to see what lessons we will learn in the process. I am going to update my blog each day with our experiences. We invite you to join us in this experiment/adventure!