Filling freezers and stocking shelves with home canning last summer with the abundance of produce available in area markets and personal gardens paid off for Latter-day Saints and their friends in the Wahpeton (N.D.) Branch and other units of the Church in North and South Dakota and Minnesota.

This winter has brought one three-day blizzard after another, starting in November and running through to February, with a day or two in between storms for residents to run a few errands. There have been no reports of Latter-day Saints suffering adversity from the weather conditions, although, automobiles are often seen off the road due to icy and low-visibility conditions.While store shelves were empty of bread, macaroni, packaged meats and other products on those storm-free days and lines at the tills were long, some members who had taken advantage of last summer's invitations to pick acres of vegetables before being plowed under only needed to buy milk. Not only did the members of Wahpeton Branch glean fields of potatoes, acres of carrots, onions, tomatoes, beans, and other staples, they bought up canning jars at rummage sales.

"We haven't had a full week of school since Dec. 9," said a local school teacher in the grocery store midday on a regular school day. School had been canceled that day, too. The checker at the till lamented that her grocery bill was sky high. Video stores have never had so much business.

Wahpeton Branch member Leona Wells of Wyndmere, N.D., a small rural community, explained the local grocer called her and asked to buy some eggs from her. He had heard the Wells had bought 30 dozen eggs from a nearby Hutterite colony. The delivery truck had not been able to make it to their town. Sister Wells cheerfully consented. A few of the blizzards closed freeways for several days. South-bound Highway I-29 was closed from the Canadian border to Iowa for three days. Some days, no fresh milk was available in the smaller towns since trucks could not make deliveries.

The first weekend of the New Year was celebrated with a blizzard that left Scouts and leaders in the Wahpeton Branch stranded at winter camp. The group, housed in a log lodge, had plenty of warm clothes, food and fuel to last the extra day and a half before the road into the camp was opened and they could return home on Sunday night.The next afternoon, major freeways and other main highways opened that had been restricted to travel since Friday afternoon. Mark Kruckenberg, a 17-year-old priest and Scout, attended a two-day wrestling tournament in Bismarck, N.D., with his school 250 miles from his home in Wahpeton, N.D., at which family members were spectators. The wrestlers and audience could not return home until Monday afternoon due to all roads being impassable with 15-foot drifts blocking freeway underpasses. The Kruckenbergs purchased Sunday wear so they could attend Church meetings in the Bismarck Ward, while many others who were snowed in held sacrament meetings in their homes.

The week of Jan. 27-31 was the first full week of school since Dec. 9 for many children and youth along the eastern border of North Dakota.

Youth from Grand Forks took advantage of the opportunity to do community service. The Young Men and Young Women of Grand Forks 2nd (N.D.) Ward "had a Drive-by Shoveling activity," said Dave Roberts, first counselor in the bishopric. "We took the youth with shovels in vans, and wherever we saw a walk needed shoveling, we stopped. We'd knock on doors, saying we were youth from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doing a service project, and would they like to have their walk shoveled. One house had no one home, so we went ahead and shoveled anyway."