Disaster Preps; portable, potable water equipment

**I am not an expert on water quality or a doctor. I am only passing along information I have come across that I have used to help my family. Please educate yourself on these matters and use care with all things health related.**

This is information on the Berkey black filters is here:http://directive21.com/accessories-black-berkey-purification-element.html

The cost has gone up ten dollars since I bought my last set seven months ago or so. The information about its filtering capabilities is also on the page. The gentleman who owns the company is very good and will take your order via the internet. He usually sends out the equipment the very next business day. It comes from California so it could be a week to receive it.

Also the information about the smaller sport drink bottle is here:http://directive21.com/accessories-sport-berkey.html

Each of the black filters is capable of filtering up to 3,000 gallons of water. A pair makes you good for 6,000 gallons and looking at one gallon of clean potable drinking water per person, per day with a house of four is 28 gallons a week. Dividing that into 6,000 is 214.286 weeks, that is over one year of four gallons a day of potable water for four people. The filters can be scrubbed clean on the outer surface by putting in clean water and brushing off the scale with a Tuffy pad or Scotch Brite pad. You can also back flush the filter to clear out the pores if you have pressurized water source. The filters could last for years if properly taken care of. Pre-filtering the water to be cleaned by running through a large coffee filter to catch leaves, grass, small rocks or sand will help prolong the service life of the filters and lessen the frequency of cleaning. The cleaner the supply, the longer the filters will work for you.

If you feel the need to pre-treat your water with bleach before running through the filters that is OK and probably a good idea if you are unfamiliar with the source. The general rule of thumb is one quarter Teaspoon to one gallon of water is prefered. See instructions here (taken from site in Israel)
http://www.newjerusalem.com/PureWater.htm

Shake or stir the water with the bleach and let air out over night, the bleach will dissipate within 24 hours. That is why even the government health sites suggest using household bleach for water purification, it will dissipate within 24 hours and be non-toxic for humans. Also have bleach on hand that has no perfume as it will taint the water with the perfume. Lola and I found a great deal on bleach at Sam's Club, under $8.00 for a case of three large bottles of bleach and each bottle is a gallon and a half. Large coffee filters (commercial maker size) are sold at Staples for $5.19 per package = 250 filters.http://www.staples.com/Bunn-12-Cup-Coffee-Filters-250-Pack/product_851085

Use a large funnel or flour sifter (examples) to support the filter and pour the water on through into a clean container to be bleached then transfer water to filter system. It will take five hours or longer for the water to flow through the filters but then it is sanitized, clean and free from bacteria. Instructions for building your own Berkey water filter system here:http://www.alpharubicon.com/kids/homemadeberkeydaire.htm

My last suggestion is a filter called the Lifesaver, it was developed by a scientist who after seeing the victims of the Tsunami in 2004 built this filter. The best price I have found it for is on Amazon dot com:
http://www.amazon.com/Lifesaver-Bottle-4000-Ultra-Filtration/dp/B001EHF99A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314321214&sr=8-1  As the gentleman says, the poor people were surrounded by water and were dying of thirst, this filter has saved lives.

Please do not let the price scare you away, at least watch the video, it is amazing and someday I will have this one or its big brother which treats up to 6000 liters. The usefulness of this filter is the amount that it can treat (4000) liters or 1056.688204 gallons. It is highly portable, can be carried with a backpack (B.o.B) and is very efficient. Clean water is the difference between life and death, literally.

So there you have it, all I know about water filters and portable systems. There are other filter systems out there that do a great job, I looked for what could do it in the simplest way possible, less moving parts and I can buy replacement filters with relative ease while the markets are still doing well. Remember the saying, "Two is one and one is none." If you have only one of any item that is crucial to your health and well being then you may as well have none because in this life, everything breaks. Gets lost, stolen, forgotten, left behind, add in your own here. If you have more than one of the critical items then you have redundancy and you have sustainability and that leads to better survival.

 

Prepare, live well and pray always,

Lou.

May you have a Jesus filled day

Did you R.S.V.P?

The Lord God sends out an invitation to all the world to come to His table and many ignore it. Please do not be one of those people but instead come to the feast of God and partake of His goodness. Read here what this man has to say, taken from Daily Gospel website;
 http://www.dailygospel.org/main.php?language=AM&module=commentary&localdate=20110818

Thursday of the Twentieth week in Ordinary Time Commentary of the day
Saint Macarius of Egypt (?-405), monk
Spiritual homilies, no.15, §30-31

«Come to the wedding feast»

In the visible world, if a very small people rise up against the king to make war on him, the latter doesn't bother to lead the operation himself but sends his soldiers with their captains and it is they who engage combat. But if, on the other hand, the people who rise up against him is very powerful and capable of ravaging his kingdom, the king feels he must undertake the campaign himself, together with his court and army, and lead the battle. See, then, what dignity is yours! God himself set out on campaign together with his armies, that is to say the angels and his blessed spirits, coming to defend you himself and deliver you from death. Take heart, then, and behold the providence of which you are the object.

Let us take another example from our present life. Imagine a king who meets a poor, sick man and does not turn away in disgust but heals his wounds with health-giving remedies. He takes him into his palace, clothes him in purple, puts a diadem on him and invites him to his table. This is the way in which Christ, the heavenly king, comes to man in his sickness, heals him and makes him sit down at his royal table, and all this without violating his freedom but drawing him on by persuasion to accept so high an honor.

Indeed, it is written in the Gospel how the Lord sent his servants to invite those who should have been delighted to come, and he sent them a summons: «My dinner is ready!» But those who had been called excused themselves... Do you see what happened? He who sent out the call was ready, but those who were called made off. So it is they who are responsible for their fate. This, then, is the Christian's great dignity. See how the Lord prepares the Kingdom for him and invites him to come in; but as for those others, they refuse to come. From the point of view of the gift they are about to receive we could say that, if someone were to undergo trials from the creation of Adam to the end of the world, they would have done nothing by comparison with the glory they will receive as an inheritance, for they must reign with Christ through endless ages. Glory be to him who has loved that soul so much and entrusted both himself and his grace to it! Glory be to his majesty!

Warning signs of financial collapse

Today I am passing along an audio clip from a fellow blogger: http://lindseywilliams101.blogspot.com/2011/08/euro-is-going-to-fall-fast-lindsey.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LindseyWilliams+%28Lindsey+Williams%29

The speaker is Lindsey Williams and I believe he has some very interesting things to say. If you are interested in such things then I highly recommend jotting down his information and researching for yourself to prove if what he says is evident or plausible.  At the least I would hope his warnings would prompt you to not be stagnant about getting your financial house in order, not to mention your spiritual house. The days and months ahead will take a toll on humanity and if we expect Christians to have an influence on a fallen world we will need to be able to stand with confidence in our God while the others are huddled in the shadows. I will post more on this soon.

May the peace of Jesus be over you this day and may you find courage in Him and Him alone. In the end, He is all any of us will ever have.

Peace.

**One Spirit, One Flesh**

Good morning and may God bless you, I pray that your sleep was good and that His spirit infilled you with your first wakened breath. This morning I share with you the link for today's mass readings and a reflection by Oswald Chambers. They are not written for each other but in a way it seems the good Lord has put them together for today. The readings have to do with our connectedness with God and how He has brought us through much and our connectedness with each other, namely, marriage between one man and one woman. I would ask you to please take note of Jesus' response to being questioned about divorce. How He politely refers back to how things were set up in the beginning, that man and woman would merge and become one flesh (and God is the glue). Please also notice that Jesus makes it plain that some are able to accept marriage and some are not because they are born that way, made that way through others and some that have renounced marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Jesus does not spell it out but to me He is stating that we are not all made the same. But, for those that are joined in marriage there are blessings to cover the joining of man and woman (please look to the commentary "They are not two but one flesh") at the end of the page of the gospel, it is a blessing to be said over a couple at the altar. A marriage blessing.
I would encourage those of you that are married to print out that blessing and just before hitting the print button, place your name and your spouse's name inside of the blessing and put it up somewhere that both of you can look at it each day. Maybe once a week stand together and recite the blessing to each other and speak out your names to each other. It is a way to reconnect spiritually with each other and with God in the joining of the one flesh.

In the reflection of Oswald Chambers he reminds us much like the first reading that God has brought His people through great and impossible things. He has chased out enemies of His chosen people using nature's creatures and performed mighty deeds in separating large bodies of water many times to put obstacles between His chosen people and their enemies. God has taken from those He has not called and given blessings to those He has called. Some may stop and think this is unfair to the other people, that they deserve a place to live also. Well, to that I can tell you this, He is the creator of all things therefore He is the owner and provider of all things and He is the judge of who gets what. If it is God's decision to revoke blessings given to people who now spit upon His Holy Name and who war against His holy people, His chosen ones then sorry but He is not like the Obama Administration, He will not fund the "other side" and allow them to rule unjustly over His chosen people. If they want to make war on His Holy People then they can do it on their own land with their own food and their own houses....oh...wait....they never created anything for themselves because in order to do that they would have first had to make the Dirt that from that dirt was formed all matter of living things on the earth. Sounds like ownership trumps being fair, God is fair, if they can make their own stuff then they can have at it and they can spit on His name "from over there" but if they cannot create life on their own, make a their own planet to live on...oh....wait...that would require having their own solar system too....oh boy this stuff is getting complicated and complex. Well, we will leave it there.

Oswald makes a point that for those who do trust in God and His mighty works in their own particular lives, those who without a doubt can point to a significant time when all seemed lost but almost overnight the tide turned and they give all credit to Almighty God, for them they have a reason to believe in God's ability to move mountains. The mountains in our lives and the mountains that seem to block our way of life. Oswald states that those who draw from their confidence in God through easy times will also draw from the same well of confidence during the most stressful times and it is then that others will seek them out because of their steadfast confident composure. Allow that steadfastness to make a home in you today. May your calmness of spirit be evident for others that do not seek the supplier of confidence. We can have times of worry too but as believers we do not let worry overtake us every hour of the day, we choose to remain before Him and trust that as He has done mighty and glorious things in the past, so shall He do more great things to come.

Peace to you.

Lou

August 12th.
	THE THEOLOGY OF REST
"Why are ye fearful, 0 ye of little faith?" Matthew 8:26 When we are in fear we can do nothing less than pray to God, but Our Lord has a right to expect that those who name His Name should have an understanding confidence in Him. God expects His children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the reliable ones. Our trust is in God up to a certain point, then we go back to the elementary panic prayers of those who do not know God. We get to our wits' end, showing that we have not the slightest confidence in Him and His government of the world; He seems to be asleep, and we see nothing but breakers ahead. "0 ye of little faith!" What a pang must have shot through the disciples - 'Missed it again!' And what a pang will go through us when we suddenly realize that we might have produced down right joy in the heart of Jesus by remaining absolutely confident in Him, no matter what was ahead. There are stages in life when there is no storm, no crisis, when we do our human best; it is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon whom we rely. If we have been learning to worship God and to trust Him, the crisis will reveal that we will go to the breaking point and not break in our confidence in Him. We have been talking a great deal about sanctification - what is it all going to amount to? It should work out into rest in God which means oneness with God, a oneness which will make us not only blameless in His sight, but a deep joy to Him.

Daily Mass readings: http://www.dailygospel.org/main.php?language=AM&module=readings&localdate=20110812

 

May you have a Jesus filled day