We are Jacob and Shaun-ta'. We have been married for 7 & 1/2 years and have 3 sweet children. We have been truly blessed throughout our marriage. God has seen us through many wonderful years. We like most young married couples with young families have had our struggles. We have never had a lot of money and most times just barely scrape by trying to make ends meet. Shaun-ta' has always been very frugal, always on the hunt for good deal, even as a teenager. As a stay at home mom she has become even more focused on finding new ways to save money and make those hard earned dollars really stretch. She loves all things domestic, including cooking, baking, crafting, and sewing, and she strives to utilize each of these talents in our home to the fullest.
Jacob works as a home energy rater and over the years as he has learned and become increasingly knowledgeable in this area, he has become very passionate about it. He loves helping people build healthy energy efficient houses and helping people reduce their energy cost/usage in their existing homes.
We both love and enjoying gardening and love growing new things. There is something so satisfying in reaping the benefits of your labors and there is no better way to truly see something through from start to finish than planting a seed in the ground. It also provides us with the most inexpensive way to provide good, healthy, organic, food for our family. Right now we live on less than a quarter of an acre so we have become very creative in the ways that we garden, trying to squeeze a lot into a little. We have learned so much and love trying new techniques and ideas. Jacob has become very interested in permaculture and permaculture techniques. He has been studying and expanding his knowledge of this and we have been implementing these ideas as we have built our gardens. We hope one day to have some more land where we can grow much more and also have some animals.
We love to learn new things and have a great desire to become more and more self sufficient in all aspects of our lives. We know that we have been counseled by prophets of God to live our lives as providently as possible and to prepare ourselves for the ups and downs of life.www.lds.org/family We have been counseled to have a 3 month supply of foods that we normally eat (including drinking water), financial reserves, a long-term supply of basic food items, a supply of medication and first aid items, as well as clothing and bedding. We should also prepare ourselves for emergency situations by having 72 hour kits ready and updated. We know that these things are important as we have had to rely on financial reserves and food storage in past years to see us through the lean times.
We have been truly blessed as we have done our best to follow this counsel. We are not perfect in it, not even close, we have so much work to do in these areas, but we have such a great desire to live providently.
Several months ago we felt prompted to start this blog as a way of documenting our journey. We really wanted a place to allow our creative juices to flow and to be able to share all the amazing things we are learning with others as well as glean knowledge from those who would read our blog. A few weeks after the idea to start the blog came to us, Shaun-ta' was asked to be the Provident Living Leader in our church. She was so excited about the opportunity to share the wealth of knowledge that we have been focused on gaining. She also knew of God's great love for her and was reminded of how well He knows us personally. We truly know that as we strive to do those things that God asks of us He blesses us and provides a way for us to accomplish those things.
God has asked us to live providently, become self reliant and to live the Word of Wisdom. We have been inspired to strive to accomplish these things and hope you will too in whatever ways the spirit prompts you to do so.
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