B.D.'s mother-in-law gives some advice

I just posted B.D.'s experience doing the "No Electric Lights/No Powered Entertainment" challenge in our ward.

She had emailed her experience to her mother-in-law, and her m-i-l sent this reply back to her:

"I think your family experiments with flashlights and lanterns are "right on."  In my opinion (which y'all are free to ignore), in addition to having flashlights and lanterns, everyone should consider having one or two small gasoline or propane powered generators that could provide power to a refrigerator and freezer and maybe even a microwave in times of lengthy power outages. If you are in a position to invest in a larger generator that is plumbed into a natural gas supply and wired to the most important electrical things in your house, it is worth considering.

Several times our family has gone without electrical power for three days at a time. At our house, we lose everything (including our water supply, sump pumps, and basement exit pump) when the electric power goes down. Our basement could begin to flood within a matter of minutes if the ground is wet with rain or melted snow. Without water, we can't even flush toilets. I have spent several very memorable days hand dipping water out of our sump pump in the basement every 15 minutes (to prevent flooding). I put the water into five-gallon buckets. If we were really desperate, we could have used the water for non-drinking purposes. We used it primarily to flush toilets. (We used the toilets and then dumped a bucket of sump pump water into them to flush them.)

Because life at our house is totally miserable without electricity, one of the first preparedness things we did was to install a big generator that can run on natural gas, propane, or gasoline. Right now, it is plumbed into a natural gas line. The generator powers 20 things in the house. Now every time the power goes out, we are supremely comfortable and thank God profusely for that generator.

Generators can be tricky, however, so regular maintenance and frequent testing of them is a BIG must. They can make life pleasant during the stressful times when the city electricity goes down.
I love you.
Mom"