A Silo of Faith

By Don L. Searle

The author lives in Utah.

Have I given my children and their children an example of faith that will help carry them through perilous times to come?

The silo holds almost four tons of wheat. The grain was put there more than 30 years ago by two loving people who hoped to provide food for their children’s families in case they faced scarcity or famine someday.

The wheat is probably no longer usable for food, but what those two people left behind may be much more valuable than food.

John and Ruth were farm people. They knew years when the crops didn’t grow well or didn’t sell for much money. They had lived through the Depression of the 1930s. They never spent money they did not have or waste anything that might be put to good use sometime. In their old barn sit buckets of rusty nails and bolts that John meant to straighten out, clean up, and reuse one day.

John and Ruth were my parents-in-law. I learned to admire them for what they had become in life and what they were willing to sacrifice to ensure a decent life for others—especially their children. Inside that silo full of grain, taped to the inner door, John and Ruth left a note specifying what they wanted done with the wheat.

“It is here to be preserved for a time of need,” John wrote. “We do not expect to live to see the day when all of this will be used for human food, but say to our family that you may take from it as needed for your own use. We want you to respect our wish that none of it is to be sold for monetary gain but may be traded for other food items if needed. … We are dedicating this wheat to help sustain the lives of those who may need it.”

They accumulated that grain from their crops over 10 years, the last bags being added in 1987. The company that bagged the wheat told them it would last “for a lifetime.” But no one anticipated that the galvanized-steel granary could rust out near the bottom. Rodents and deer, getting at a few of the bags through small holes at the base of the silo, have nibbled at the wheat. A nutritional expert tells us the grain is probably not good for human food anymore but may be used to feed animals.

Ruth and John left their family an example of self-reliance, service, and faith.

John and Ruth had faith that they were helping provide for their descendants in the way a loving Father in Heaven wanted them to do. They wrote of scriptural and prophetic counsel to store food for a future time of need. But perhaps they did not realize what kind of food they were really leaving behind: nourishment for the spirit in a store of faith that is strongly felt in their note. It’s impossible to read their words without being deeply moved and without asking ourselves what we might be leaving behind for our own descendants.

Ruth was an example of service to others in their small farming community. Because I had grown up without a father, John became one of my models of integrity.

The two of them may not have left worldly wealth for their family, but I believe no parents could have done more for their children in those circumstances. Their examples have helped mold the lives of their children and their children’s children.

Now we are living in times of crisis when there is an urgent, pressing need for faith. I have to ask myself: Have I given my children and their children an example of faith that will help carry them through perilous times to come? How can I help them to store up the faith they will yet need?

If I could choose one thing to leave them, it would be faith to rely on prophets and the spiritual self-reliance and nourishment found in the scriptures and modern revelation. That’s what John and Ruth did for their posterity.