Bridging the gap

Newsletters are now current. April 2009 has been posted, and May 2009 has not yet been written, meaning that this can now move to a monthly update and be caught up.

However, since we do have just a two-week period here, and not an entire month, I was thinking I could so something a little different until we get to the May posting, so today and next Monday I will write a little.

Sometime around January of 2008, I had a dream where a man told me that it was going to be a tumultuous year. It made an impression on me, and I guess that has been true. I spent time in Italy, Australia, and New Zealand, lost two friends and an uncle, wrote three screenplays, and lost my job. That job loss is still reverberating. There were other things I suppose, but certainly there were ups and downs, and tumult. That is looking back.

Looking forward I remember trying to imagine what would happen, to be prepared for it. I was thinking specifically about a large scale earthquake and then pandemic influenza, and if they overlapped it would be really bad.

It was easy to think of those, because they are both things where I have read many times that they are going to happen, and the question is just when. Mexico City did kind of have that happen, but we are still okay. Swine flu does not seem to be living up to the hype, and even though they have recently shortened the earthquake window to within twenty years, it still has not happened yet.

Regardless, there will still be many things happening, and preparedness is important. Knowing what will happen next would be helpful, but barring that there are all-purpose things we can do, and that's what the newsletter is all about. There were entries about pandemics in November, earthquakes a few months earlier, and saving money in October 2007. I will keep trying to be useful.

It's interesting. As ward emergency preparedness coordinator, I feel more responsible for the tangible things, but it is the generally the more spiritual letters where I receive more feedback. Well, try getting through an emergency with spiritual problems. It's a lot harder. I hope to balance the two, in the letter and in myself.