This morning as I put my makeup on, my three-year-old daughter Tessa came to visit me. With each new compact and brush I pulled out, she asked, “What’s that for, Mom?” As I explained each item, she asked, “Can I have some too?”

Her dad has trained her to ask me for things with a certain technique. She puts her hands together under her chin, cocks her head to the side, and smiles as she asks. It’s pretty hard to turn her down.

So Tessa and I were having a little girly fun playing in the makeup when 8-month-old Bonnie crawled up behind me. She grabbed onto my pant legs and pulled herself up to a tottering stand. I realized that to her, I must seem so big and so immoveable. Strong enough, at least, that she trusts her feeble attempts at balance when she is hanging on to me.

Suddenly, with my little girls, I wondered if this was a microcosm of our relationship with Heavenly Father. When we look up at Him with all the sincerity we can muster to ask for things, does His great heart melt a little? Does he look into our earnest eyes and say, “sure, little one, I love you.” Does He feel us clinging onto Him for dear life and just stand still, so that we can gain our balance and practice steadying ourselves?

This issue of Desert Saints Magazine focuses on the blessings of financial freedom and food storage, and how to accomplish both. These are righteous desires; they are also essential parts of the temporal gospel of caring for ourselves. When we ask Our Father in faith to help us accomplish these things, He surely will.

Likewise, there is no single way that everyone must follow to assemble a food supply, get out of debt or establish a financial reserve. Whether slow and steady at the local grocer fits your style, or quarterly trips to the cannery, or an annual online purchase from a grain or food storage company work better for you, it’s okay. What He cares about is that we keep these commandments; the details of how we arrive at that year’s supply are less important.

Our intention for this issue is that you will see something new that will move you to complete your year’s supply and get on firm financial footing. We may spend a lifetime in pursuit of gospel knowledge, but we can complete our year’s supply very quickly if we make an effort to do so. Remember, the blessings will follow.

All the best,

Editor@DesertSaintsMagazine.com