Taking us back…

H. Burke Peterson

With many disasters and severe weather incidents, 2011 was an active year for Mormons’ church service around the world.

Mormons’ church service – Mormon helping handsThe earthquake and devastating tsunami in Japan was the worst disaster of the year, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent immediate aid and still continues to help. The LDS Church provided more than 250 tons of supplies, food, water, blankets, bedding, hygiene items, clothing and fuel. Church-sponsored volunteers numbering over 20,000 have donated 175,000 hours of service in Japan. Church Humanitarian Services has worked with and continues to donate equipment and supplies to 20 of 54 fishing co-ops wiped out by the disaster. Latter-day Saints within Japan mobilized to help their stricken neighbors. Fifty-two Mormon meetinghouses were also damaged and have since been repaired.

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LDS-Emergency-Resources-72-Hour-Kits
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In this episode of LDS Emergency Resources, we talk about how to properly prepare and maintain a 72-hour kit. There are many elements of a 72-hour kits that often hard to understand. We attempt to help you better develop your emergency preparedness plan by helping you get a 72-hour kit.

CLICK HERE to download the LDS Emergency Family Planning Guide and get immediate access to LDS Emergency Resources, where you will get full access to ALL of our preparedness training courses, tools, and resources for creating your LDS emergency preparedness plan to get prepared once and for all.

You will have access to all of the training courses, Bishop Storehouse resources (including full list of locations), church preparedness materials, scriptures & Quotes on preparedness, planning checklists & forms, and new video step-by-step tutorials on the best methods of emergency preparedness and food storage.

Items mentioned in the episode:

• [Product Spotlight] 2-Person Elite Emergency Kit
• [Product Spotlight] Food Storage Essentials Emergency Kit
• [Product Spotlight] Emergency Preparedness Seeds (6 can variety pack)

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• LDSER | 72-Hour Kits (1 of 4)

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Children line up for a 100-yard dash as part of the Oakton Stake’s food drive. (Laurie Snow Turner)

OAKTON, Va. — More than 2.5 tons of food was collected by members of the Oakton Virginia Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during a food drive and races Nov. 5 for the LINK Against Hunger program that benefits those in need in Herndon, Sterling and Ashburn, Va.

To celebrate the LDS Church’s 75th anniversary of its welfare program, President Henry B. Eyring, first counselor of the First Presidency, asked members around the world to perform a day of service.

Oakton Virginia Stake President Scott Wheatley said the stake members’ goal for the day of service was “to let those around us know we love and follow Jesus Christ in all we do. What better way to convey that message to our community that by serving them? We want our community to know that because we follow Jesus Christ, we serve others.”

The Oakton Virginia Stake includes nine wards organized geographically in the northern Virginia area, including Reston, Herndon, Spring Lakes (a Spanish-speaking congregation), Chantilly, Franklin, Fair Oaks, Vienna, Oakton and Oak Marr.

The event’s theme was “Put a Lid on Hunger” and included a 5K run or walk, a one-mile stroll and 100-yard dashes for children. One of the entry options was donating five cans of food.

More than 500 area Mormons attended the event, which raised about 2.5 tons of food. Another $1,000 worth of food will be donated to LINK from the LDS Church’s Washington, D.C., Bishop’s Storehouse, which is a church facility that provides basic foods and essential household items to needy individuals and families.

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Elder Richard Hinckley, left, walks with Alan Marty by bales of clothing at the Humanitarian Center, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

They may seem drastically different: a nonprofit that helps children build lemonade stands, an organization that encourages character building through sports and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But they all have the same underlying goal: to promote economic self-reliance.

The LDS Church Thursday was the last stop on a nationwide tour highlighting best practices in economic self-reliance. During a two day conference sponsored by The Philanthropy Roundtable, representatives from charitable foundations across the country took a tour through Welfare Square, the LDS Humanitarian Center and the Bishop’s Central Storehouse.

“We came to Utah to see Welfare Square because it is one of the nation’s greatest models of cultivating self-reliance, not only for members of the Mormon faith but for people of all backgrounds,” said Shannon Toronto, COO of The Philanthropy Roundtable, a national network of individual donors, corporate giving officers and foundation trustees.

Previous stops on The Philanthropy Roundtable’s economic opportunity tour included Lemonade Day in Houston, which teaches children business skills, and Florida’s Positive Coaching Alliance, a nonprofit that teams up with athletic leagues to teach principles of family and community.

The Philanthropy Roundtable, which is based in Washington D.C., seeks, among other efforts, to improve charitable outcomes by educating donors, Toronto said. Economic Opportunity, as it relates to self reliance, is one of the organization’s major initiatives.

“We learned from our meeting today that the best programs recognize the dignity of the individual and that the highest quality of life is attained when a person becomes self reliant and can help others within her realm of influence,” Toronto said.

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Church Welfare Program in Action

This month the United States Senate unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the 75th anniversary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Welfare Program. Aside from noting the program’s historic anniversary, the resolution congratulated, “the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the significant contribution that its Welfare Program has had on United States citizens and many people throughout the world; and commend[ed] the many efforts made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members, through its Welfare Program, to serve others regardless of religious affiliation.”

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Occupy Wall Street – Oakland, CA

“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner,” says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, “because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”

We’re raising our alert status for the next financial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out.  We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius, chief of the $50 billion emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management.

Speaking in Tokyo, he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world’s major banks are tangled up.

Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary. An oft-heard estimate is $600 trillion. That squares with Mobius’ guess of 10 times the world’s annual GDP. “Are the derivatives regulated?” asks Mobius. “No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”

In other words, something along the lines of securitized mortgages is lurking out there, ready to trigger another crisis as in 2007-08.

What could it be? We’ll offer up a good guess, one the market is discounting.

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TOKYO — A fairly strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 has hit off the shores of Japan’s southern Okinawa Island.

Officials said the quake Tuesday about 135 miles (220 kilometers) away from the island was not expected to cause a tsunami. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Northeastern Japan was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing. Japan, which lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” is one of the world’s most seismically active countries.

ERCIS, Turkey– Rescuers have freed a woman hours after they also pulled out her 2-week-old baby girl alive from the rubble of an apartment building.

Television footage on Tuesday showed rescue workers carrying Semiha Karaduman out of the wreckage on a stretcher and moving her to an ambulance. The infant was pulled from the debris earlier.

Officials say the death toll in the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck eastern Turkey on Sunday is now 370. More than 2,000 buildings have collapsed.

Rescuers in two cities in eastern Turkey are struggling to pull out survivors from the wreckage

Rescuers in two cities, Ercis and Van, are still struggling to pull out people trapped trapping people inside mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris. Authorities have warned survivors not to enter damaged buildings and thousands of people spent a second night outdoors in cars or tents in near-freezing conditions, afraid to return to their homes. Some 1,300 people were injured.

Dogan news agency said rescuers had pulled five people out of the rubble alive in the early hours of Tuesday, although many more bodies were discovered.

In the hardest-hit city of Ercis, 9-year-old Oguz Isler was trapped for eight hours beneath the rubble of a relative’s home. He was finally rescued, but on Tuesday he was waiting at the foot of the same pile of debris for news of his parents and of other relatives who remain buried inside.

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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Cries of panic and horror filled the air as a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing at least 85 people as buildings pancaked and crumpled into mounds of rubble.

Tens of thousands fled into the streets running, screaming or trying to reach relatives on cell phones as apartment and office buildings cracked or collapsed. As the full extent of the damage became clear, survivors dug in with shovels or even their bare hands, desperately trying to rescue the trapped and the injured.

“My wife and child are inside! My 4-month-old baby is inside!” CNN-Turk television showed one young man sobbing outside a collapsed building in Van, the provincial capital.

The hardest hit area was Ercis, an eastern city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border, which lies on one of Turkey’s most earthquake-prone zones. The bustling city of Van, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) to the south, also sustained substantial damage. Highways in the area caved in and Van’s airport was damaged, forcing flights to be diverted.

State-run TRT television reported that 59 people were killed in Ercis, 25 others died in Van and a child died in the nearby province of Bitlis.

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