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Um So I'm going to share with you some thoughts on uh moving and how to find a place. Now. Um This is a very important topic and I just don't have time to do anything close to what I could or would like to on this topic. But, um, I was told to make something and I'm gonna make something and I know I only have a few minutes to do this today and that's the way it is. So you have an, an opportunity here to back. Um I was gonna say backpack, that's absolutely not a correct use of that word um to piggyback on my faith here. Uh That I'm exercising and making this video uh by taking it seriously. That's your opportunity and the fact that it's crude and it's gorilla that all gives you an opportunity to exercise greater faith. And it's a wonderful treasure because in rough packaging, uh God, when we allow God to send us blessings in rough packaging, it gives him permission to put nicer things in the box than he otherwise would be able to. And it's through small things that God does great things. Um I will start this video with a brief story and I've changed all the details because I don't have, I didn't have time to ask permission to the gentleman. He probably wouldn't mind, but just out of respect for his privacy. So the names and details have been changed, but the relative lessons are all the same. So we'll call this guy, Ted and Ted's a trucker. Now, his name's not Ted and he's not a trucker but close enough. Ted's a trucker. He has a full time job. He makes decent money, but he doesn't, you know, he's not a millionaire. Um He has a family and he has a uh a normal situation in terms of all the challenges of everything I just described. So in other words, he's facing a lot of the same challenges as all of you. Everyone's different, of course, but this is a very uh average situation. And so there's nothing special about the, the, the circumstances Ted is in, he's, he's up against a lot of the same challenges as anyone else and Ted is in a house and he knew he should think about moving pre COVID. Um And he tried to, he seriously considered it. There were things about his work and family that he could not navigate around. Uh Ted's an honest man and he's a friend of mine. Um He's a good man. So Ted uh Ted and I had a brief conversation recently very recently and I said, Ted, you ought to think about moving. And he, he told me, yeah, here's my back story. And I really wish I could. And I said, well, I don't know what I said, but I probably said, pray about it. Ted could tell you, but we had this brief, brief conversation and out of small things, the Lord will do great things. And Ted got to thinking, um, and it just so happens that all of the following happened. I think, I think all this happened within two weeks of our conversation. But I, I'm pretty sure all of this happened. Um, uh, it started after our conversation on once the ball got rolling. I think we're talking about two days where this was all went from, from no idea how to make this happen to a done deal. And this is what happened. So Ted's a trucker and he has a full time job and then he kind of moonlights on side jobs in one of his side jobs. He has a long standing relationship with a relatively wealthy gentleman who has Ted Hall stuff for him in his truck. And this gentleman owns a very large chunk of land in a much more rural area than Ted lives in. And, uh, he went to a hull load for the gentleman, his friend and his friend said, oh, yeah, there's this house for sale. It's, it's, uh, it's on a little lot but it's, it's right next to my land and um, Ted said, holy cow, how much is it selling for? Because it's perfect. It meets all of the things we're looking for and it's in a much better place than we live in. And um, Ted's friend actually ended up buying the property and cutting a deal with Ted that he could move in immediately and live there and basically rent to own and that his payments were just going to be the normal work that Ted does for him. So instead of trading cash, they're gonna basically trade a house. And when we had our conversation, one of the things Ted said, and he's absolutely correct. He said everywhere. I'm looking to, to move, uh I'm going to lose a fortune because to get into the same size house and we have to spend something like twice as much money as my house is worth. And I just don't have that kind of money. So he opened his mind and the Lord made way and I'm telling you the door's closing, but we believe in a God who opens doors. I believe in a God that does the impossible every day. He delights in showing us that with him. Nothing is impossible. If we just believe, if we just believe he will do exploits in our lives, he delights to show us how much he loves us. But the rate limiting effect is our faith. So we have to have faith. So that's thing number zero. I'm a computer scientist by trade. And uh that's thing number zero, we start our accounts at zero. Um So the, but the first thing, the next thing on the list is when we start talking about anything in the gospel, anything, the very first thing we need to talk about before that is repentance. And I will not stop banging this drum. I also play the drums. I will not stop banging on this drum and I'm not very good at the drums and maybe I'm not very good at preaching repentance, but I did write a book about it. And if you have not read that book, it's called Repentance Making Straight The Way Of God by Robert Smith. It's on Amazon. You can download the PDF for free at Upward thought.blogspot.com. You can also download the, the MP threes there for free professionally recorded audio book. Uh You can also listen to it on youtube. If you search Upward thought you'll find it. It's on a playlist. You can listen to it for free . If you not experience that book, you really need to. And if you don't live what's in it, then nothing else we're going to talk about right now matters. You have better things to do than to worry about where to live. Although it is very accurate that uh to consider that well, repentance means forsaking your sins. It means aligning yourself completely to everything you know about God right now totally and get it done. And if you're watching this video, you should know that he absolutely wants you to think about where you're living. I'm not gonna say it's his will that you move immediately. You need to do things in order and always do in all things. Everything that makes sense, do the things that lead you to the greatest value. As far as you know, that's his will for you and for me and for everybody and as you do that, he will lead you along and show you what's better than you ever imagined. And you go and do that too and it's an endless cycle till you come to him face to face, which means a lot more than you think it does. Um But that's something actually, I'm gonna write about later today. So who knows when you'll see that? But repentance is a prerequisite for anything else to matter. And so I'm not gonna drone on too much longer about that. But my point is, please don't think that anything we talk about here is going to do you any good whatsoever. If your heart is not totally aligned to God because it won't. There's no shortcuts and there's no, there's no sidetracks. You have to go right where He tells you to go and that path is always straight through your own heart. So I encourage you to pray before during and after this and all things, listen to what God tells you and open your mind and your heart, your mind, in terms of getting rid of this idea, that things are impossible. You let God tell you what's possible. Don't disqualify yourself from a game that you haven't even played. You let him disqualify you. He's not gonna do that. He's gonna show you the way fact. He's almost always gonna show you a better way than you ever ever could have imagined. So, get rid of those obstacles in your mind and also get rid of the obstacles in your heart. This comes down to what you desire by the way, this is tremendously good advice for all things, even things that have nothing to do with where you live, open your heart completely to him. Don't fixate so much on the things you think you want . Trust me, he knows better than you. What will give you what you want if you want to learn more about that, you read the book I wrote called Faith Through Faith Through Faith by Robert Smith. And it's available in all the same formats and places as I told you, repentance was. So that's a very important process. But um my point again is, is knock, if you knock, it will be open, open your mind to the possibility. Don't make a list of all the reasons why this won't work for you. You just see Kim and his will in all things and he will make a way. All right, final note on this uh, I was reading in Ether one last night and I came across this verse and things like this always make me chuckle, which is probably a strange reaction. But nevertheless, and on a side note, uh, related my son recently on Sunday, one of my sons, he read through Genesis and I said, how'd that go? And he said, good said, did you learn anything? He's like, yeah, I said, do you have any questions? He's like, no, I said, then you didn't read it very well. I said, read it again and I want you to stop every single time. You can't explain why something happened, why something was said the way it was why certain people did certain things, what every single word means and how you would explain it to a six year old. Then he said, OK, dad, so you see me be busy on that for a while. Um OK, so verse 38 here it came to pass. This is the story of the brother Jared. So back story there at the tower of Babel and everyone's language just got confounded. And this guy Jared had an idea. Oh My brother is a really spiritual dude. I'm gonna ask him to ask God not to, to uh scramble our language. And then that happened. And so he uh he placed his bet and he won. So he decided to double down, which is a really good strategy in life on all things . It's also a really good strategy with God. So we pick up in verse 38 and it came to pass that Jared Spake again unto his brother saying now, interjection, I want you to think about it as I'm reading these words, where the heck, Jared got the idea to pray for this because it's kind of a crazy chain of things. He says, go and inquire of the Lord whether he will drive us out of the land and if he will drive us out of the land, cry unto him whither, we shall go and who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth. And if it so be let us be faithful unto the Lord that we may receive it for our inheritance. And long story short, the brother of Jared does pray and basically has the same exact conversation that Jared somehow knew they were going to have and grants them the same exact thing that Jared was seeking and he even uses the same words, right? So , so here it is in verse 42 there will amet the and I will go before thee into a land which is choice above all the lands of the earth. Now, I'm gonna give you two nuggets here, but let's start with the one. Um So in the one, sorry, I'm filtering out a very bad dad joke that I'd like to make right now . Um in the one, I'll just say it and then it will go away. So, you know, you used to get those 99 cent nuggets and there's four nuggets in the box because of inflation, there's only two, we're gonna have two nuggets here because of inflation would have had four before COVID. All right. Now that it's out of my system, I'm sorry. Um So the first nugget is a question and I'm not gonna answer this question. You can think about this. Um I if you have an uh uh an answer, please share it with all of us, share it with the class by making a comment here or if you're not comfortable with it being public, shoot me an email, it's upward thought at gmail.com. Uh I'm very curious to know more about this. Uh And I don't actually have the answer right now. So the first question is where the heck did Jared get the idea to pray about these very, very specific things? Now, I don't know that. And so this isn't one of the nuggets. Um But a principle we can extract from this is when you pray really specifically, you get really specific answers. Another principle which I've talked about before is if you want bold answers, make bold moves. And I think uh I've had specific conversations with specific people where they say, well, I'm not gonna do anything until God tells me exactly what to do. And I think to myself. Well, you're not gonna get very far then because you're, you're giving him an extremely narrow channel to work in. If you want bold answers, make bold moves. And people are like, well, I don't wanna make mistakes. Here's the thing. Yeah, I'll teach this to you with a very strange analogy. But it works. If you look into the work, work the way that snakes move, snakes are very interesting symbol because they're used both, they're used for powerful spiritual beings, both good and evil. So Moses made the brass serpent and he put it up on a staff that serpent represented Christ. And when people looked at it, they were healed of the poisonous snake bites that they were getting. Isn't that interesting? So there's earth snakes that are biting people literally and poisoning them because they're venomous and then the heavenly snake is shown to them and when they look to it, they live and not to get too deep here. But when the Israelites left Egypt, they went into a deeper state of being, they were exposed to greater light and greater darkness. And so um their enemies before were the Egyptians and those were just humans. And now all of a sudden they're living through plagues and uh all sorts of miraculous experiences and out in the desert. Now they have to contend with poisonous snakes and with uh they're healed by this new advent of a heavenly snake. Of course, Satan appeared as a snake in the Garden of Eden. And I don't want to get too much more into that. Uh Seraphim is those are fiery flying serpents. Um, all of these things are described with language that fluidly navigates through many rich ideas. Um Seraphim aren't actually snakes, they're in the form of people and, uh, as my daughter said , uh the other day, but dad, they're animals and there's a, there's an ox and there's an eagle and I told her, uh, I haven't said this publicly, but I'll tell you now since we're here. Um, that's not true. They're not animals and that's a mystery. Maybe I'll explain later. It's actually super important . Let's backtrack back to the snakes. So if God uses something as a symbol, it's probably not a bad idea to look into that something and learn more about it. And he'll use it to teach you even more about whatever it is he alluded to. So it turns out the snakes that we have today on the earth. Most of them move with what's called a serpentine locomotion. And that's two fancy words in a row. But basically they move in a wave kind of shape. So they're moving forward, but they're doing it by going side to side. It's a fascinating thing. Here's the really fascinating thing that is the fastest way for a snake to move and it's not even close to the other ways. The next fastest way is side winding So if you look at a sidewinder snake, the, it's the funniest thing. So regular snakes move forward and I shouldn't call them regular because I'll offend all of the other kinds of snakes. The most common type of snake moves forward and it does it by moving side to side, the sidewinder moves forward, but its whole body is turned 90 degrees. And so it's pointed to the side that the body is elongated. It's, it's uh it's uh well, I don't know how else to describe it, but you can look up a video or a picture how this works. And the snakes heads pointed forward in the direction of motion. This is very interesting because in my opinion, this is a, this is a symbol that shows us the deceptions of Satan, right? Oh Here's a snake and he's moving almost as fast as the other kind and he's slithering just like the other kind. But it's very different. And in fact how that snake moves, it's actually picking up its body and walking, which is very interesting because what being walks mankind who are in the image of God. But let's just set that aside. Anyway, the third kind of snake, it moves forward and I'm trying to remember what the word for this is. I can't, but the scales on its stomach actually push it along and it, it's the funniest thing. It's like the wave in a crowd. Um That's what you can see on its body and its body is oriented completely in the direction of motion. It's all these, as these waves go up and down the snake's body, it's moving forward, just crawling forward very slowly. Now, what's interesting is all of the snakes that move that way. Um They tend to be burrowing snakes. They live in the ground and they use that motion on the ground to dig tunnels and because the motion of the stomach actually moves the dirt out of the way it, it, it, that wave motion pushes dirt to the tail. It's very fascinating. So when they move this way on the ground, they're really slow. And it's interesting. Another little tidbit here is that the serpentine locomotion. It um Sorry, I, I was just thinking, I sure hope my audio is working. I didn't test it and that'd be a real shame. Um It happens sometimes and I don't bother to rerecord videos. Uh The serpentine motion that the first one we talked about, not only do they move side to side as they're moving forward, but um this way of moving, they actually push against things like the rock, like a rock or the dirt or whatever obstacle they might have. And they use all the obstacles in their path to propel them forward even faster than they'd go without them. This is so rich in symbolism. It is not even funny. And you thought you were watching a video about finding a house to move to. So, um if you haven't figured it out, God will use whatever you're interested in to teach you about what you really should be interested in. And as we approach Him, we also become like that in how we communicate. Because as you come closer to Him, you can't help but be more like Him in all ways, not just very specific, traditionally religious ways. So bold moves, give you bold answers and you move forward a lot faster, even though it looks like you're turning to the left and the right, you're actually moving forward way faster than those people that just take baby steps because the only thing they ever do is what they're 100 and 10% sure about. Now. The funny thing about it is that the people that make bold moves over time, they will actually develop such an extensive model of the character of God that they will move way more accurately towards him than the slow pokes. It's very interesting and that's what happens. So that's all interesting. Let's get back to this. So the first nugget was boy, that's a very specific question. So um to, to ask that the, that Jared asked the brother of Jared to inquire the Lord about his very specific set of criteria and he got what he was asking for. And that's because formulating questions is an exercise of faith. It's a demonstration of faith and all of God's power comes through faith. So let's formulate some questions. And if we wouldn't have asked that crazy detailed question, my question for you is, would you have gotten the answer ? There was a second nugget though. I will go before the into a land, which is this? Oh, so I'm sorry, let me just back up here. Um So he tells them, go on this journey and he says, um, gather up all your junk and then, uh go into this valley which is in the north. Now they know about this valley. You read the rest of the chapter. It's even got a name. So their society is very familiar with this valley and it sounds like it's very much a frontier area. It's the limit of where people have gone. And specifically, if you read the rest, it, it calls the land beyond that a place where people had never been. So this is very interesting because when you seek the guidance of the Lord, you will follow in lesser and lesser trodden paths. You will become a weirdo because as you ascend towards Him, you absolutely go away from everyone else except those who are already closer to him than you. So the Jareds were led to the limit of their present understanding. And then God says, there will I meet thee and I will go before thee into a land which is choice above all the lands of the earth. Here, I will specifically direct your attention to the fact that Jared asked for a land not with specific, this is what makes it good descriptions, right? You know how I I made this long series on moon I seven, which you should listen to. But the scriptures use the word good again and again and again, God uses that and God's servants use that word. They don't define it in terms of stuff. You know, they don't swap out stuff, you know, in place for the word good. Why? Because it's a pattern, the word cannot be defined in a specific set of circumstances because God's kingdom is a progressive hierarchy. And if you tie the word good to specific things and people, you can't do that without cutting yourself off from everything that is better than that. The only good definition of good is God himself and everything else has a limit. So the wisdom of Jared was to ask for a land which is choice above all the lands of the earth. He didn't say I want to go to Jamaica, right? He didn't know about Jamaica. But even if he did, he wouldn't have asked for it. He didn't say I wanna be by the beach. He didn't say I want it to be 70 degrees all the time. He didn't say anything about that. He just said I want it to be better than any other place. Why is this a powerful thing? Because they only knew the land that went up to the land northward, wherever this valley was, the valley of Nimrod is what, what it was called. They only knew what they knew, they exercised faith because what they, what they are saying here is Lord, we have no idea what, you know, we have no idea what's on this planet. All we know is what we know. So I'll tell you what, can you please just tell us where we should go according to your knowledge of what is best and that should absolutely orient you to what it means to have faith in God and to trust Him, it's to disconnect from your idea of what you think is best and fling yourself into his arms knowing full well, you have no idea what that's like and saying, Lord, even if what you lead us to seems like the worst possible thing we could ever imagine in a million years because you are perfect and you know everything and you love us more than we love ourselves, whatever you send us, we are going to interpret in our minds. We've already decided in our minds and our hearts. We will accept this as the greatest possible gift that anyone could ever give us because we know that's exactly what it is. And when you know that without a shadow of a doubt, you will have the same faith that the brother of Jared did. And I have just given you a tremendously valuable key. So we are gonna back down from that level of faith and give you a ladder towards it as we discuss some of the things that you should think about looking for. Um I have another preamble disclosure here to get through first. Um When people conduct this search because they're scared of what's coming. They are guaranteed to fail. I want to tell you a secret. Whatever you're most afraid of, it's in your greatest benefit for God to, to smack you in the head with it. There's, there's not a better way of saying that the best thing that God can do is put what you're most afraid of right in your lap. That's the greatest love he could show you is to do that while offering you through your faith in Him. Everything you need to overcome that don't do this, search in fear, don't do anything in fear. Look towards God in all things and develop the trust where you will absolutely submit to His will no matter what it is because you recognize that it's the best possible thing. There is no safety in a place that is a pernicious false tradition and you should expunge it from your beliefs because it's not true and it never was. There is only safety in God and actually safety isn't even the most important thing he offers trust in him is much more powerful than safety from Him. So there's a, a, there's a scripture in the old Testament, it says I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord. Then essentially anything else here on earth. And until you develop that attitude that you'd rather be living in the will of God, even if it's through the most brutal, gruesome, undesirable, repulsive, scary, uncomfortable, painful, whatever that there is that you'd rather be there than anywhere else. That's something to work on. It's very important. So where does God's safety come from again? It doesn't come through pla f from a place it comes through law, given and obeyed, comes through law. And where does law come from? Law comes to and through people. You're either Moses or you're Israel. Those are your two choices when it comes to law. So what I'm saying is there are no places of refuge. If there are, they are actually only people of refuge. And so what I invite you to do, if you have a desire in your heart to find a quote unquote safe place, one thing you should do is find out how to let go of that and to instead trust in God with all your heart. Because as long as you're leaning on a place of safety or safety at all, you don't actually trust God. Trusting God is what Stephen had when he had joy, even though he was getting stoned to death because he felt it was an honor to suffer for the name of Christ until you go through that gate. Nothing much matters on this side of it, everything worth having is on the other side of full trust in God. But if you can desire to have a place of refuge for the right reasons, which is to help people draw closer to God through your sacrifice and your faith, to provide a bridge whereby others can have greater faith in God because they're not ready to do what you've done. That's the right attitude. And if you can get that attitude into your heart and make it whole and consummate, there's no exceptions to it. Then I invite you to become one such person who receives promises from God and through you, you can offer God's safety to others as they're developing trust, full trust in God. And that's the point. OK? So all that, all that under consideration. Now we're gonna get back to, we talked about this general flinging yourself into the arms of Jesus kind of faith. And now, and, and you detach from all the particulars there. But God commands us to ask him for what we desire and to use our brains to think about what we should be asking for and whatever wisdom we've required. And I'm gonna share with you some ideas and then we're gonna hit Zillow and that's, you gotta sit through all this to get to that. It's like uh eating a dinner. You don't really like to get to the dessert. So I appreciate your patience here. This is uh is burning up my morning. Unfortunately, I'm looking at my notes that I wanted to get to writing about today. Um, so I hope you make use of this. So here are some things to consider. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, whatever God tells you supersedes anything. I'm going to tell you. It's, it's a, it's between you and him. I'm just trying to help out a little. So the big picture, the macro, you need to think about what, where is the closest population center? And how big is it? Because if things were to go south, people are gonna walk to places they think might have more to offer them than where they are. And if, where they are is in a city, it's going to be very bad. And so they'll try to get the heck out of there and they will probably be on foot, but they might be in vehicles. And you need to think about how hard it would be to get to where you are. Uh, they taught us in the military that one of the best places to hide is in a swamp because the human mind naturally avoids things that are difficult to get to. And, uh, one of the worst places to be is right along the highway because again, that's where people will tend to travel is on a highway and there's a million things in between those two things. I'm not gonna direct you towards swamps today. But, um, one of the main reasons for that is the next point, nuclear silos or reactors and the wind generally blows east in the United States. So you can look at projected fallout maps. There are plenty of resources online where you can see where the nuclear silos are. You can see where the, those the missiles, where the missiles are. Um, they're always near an air force base as far as I know, but there are maps. You don't have to um you know, bribe some miser and get classified information that you, you just look online and you get the general scope of things and um nuclear reactors and when a reactor goes into meltdown, the fallout blows with the wind. Um So you need to look at where that all flows and that's something you think about. Another thing that you might not have thought about. Uh I invite you to go read 35 21 22 and think about the phrase numbered among the remnant that's rich language. Um And being around them is uh an aspect of being numbered among them. It's not the full picture, but it's a part of it. And another thing I want. So, so thinking about where people with Native American ancestry live and are concentrated, that is a golden ticket. That is a valuable piece of information. Now in saying that I without delving into an enormous topic, well, maybe I will maybe I will. Let's delve. Um, but I'll try to keep it brief. There's a really big difference between Native Americans who live on reservations and native Americans that live off reservations. And I personally do not believe that many as a percentage of the natives that live on reservations are ever going to be very open to the gospel, the gospel as, as I believe. And there are a lot of reasons for that and I have personal experience for what I'm saying. Um, but one thing that's very interesting to look at if you haven't is to Google around there. There are some articles I believe one was from 2016. There are articles out there where, um, oh, I think it was uh, 21 and me, but one of these DNA companies did this big old survey of the United States and they found a surprising percentage of Native American ancestry um, in people that didn't know that they had Native American ancestry. So that's, that's really interesting. But there are people who know that they have Native American ancestry. But looking between these two things, you can actually find maps online of the percent of native Americans in the population. You'll find they're concentrated in places like North Dakota and South Dakota. And I think one or both of those states has more per capita than anywhere else in the United States except for Alaska. Um, and I wouldn't recommend for anyone to live in Alaska, but don't let me stop you. That's not a place that would be on my list. Um And then another chunk is rocky mountains. There have been prophecies about the rocky mountains being uh a good place to be. We'll say when all this stuff shakes out. Ok. So right there, I've just narrowed your search. I'll just cut to the chase to North Dakota, South Dakota Wyoming and Montana. Basically. Now that being said, if the Lord told me to go stand on my head for 10 years, that's what I do. If he told me to go live in the place, I'd least want to live ever, which is probably Provo Utah, I would go do it. Um Whatever, whatever he says, that's what I'm going to go do and I advise you to do the same. But like I said, he expects us to use our brains and think through this stuff. So, uh my point in sharing this, we're going to go through the micro list too is those areas I just listed would be really easy to move to. Oh, and Northern Panhandle of Idaho would be really easy to move to. If it were three years ago, there were so many properties where you could sell your house wherever you live. Now move there , get a nicer house for the same price on land or get a decent house on land for way less than what you get for your old house. That's not true anymore. But why I'm gonna take you to Zillow is that there are still places where that's true. And if you want to cut to the chase, the Dakotas is the answer . Now again, you might have some weird situation where you get a special deal, whatever or the Lord tells you go somewhere else, whatever. It's definitely gonna be the case. Ok? With somebody here are the micro concerns. Fastest way to die is to run out of well, fast way is to get shot or get your head chopped off or something. But the the fastest way to die from your body not functioning properly without the intervention of others is running out of water. Um I guess you could freeze to death too. Maybe that's the fastest way. But anyway, the point is water is very important. You got about three days without water, depending on a whole lot of things. So having a well is really important. You don't want to be on city water. Um Having a spring is even better in some ways because you don't necessarily need electricity to get that water. Obviously, surface water is subject to contamination from fallout and other things. But um they are both really good to have a pond can also be good because obviously it gives you water, but you it's enough water that you could use it for irrigation if you had to. Almost all the places I mentioned have terrible rainfall and so to grow water, to grow water, to grow food, you absolutely need water. Um Although there are crops that function a lot better uh than others without it like rye. So the ability to grow food is important and those who are coming from east of the Mississippi where I grew up have no idea how hard it is to grow food out west, especially in the Rockies because you have short seasons, cool, cool nights. Um and there's not very much rain and in many places, the soil is very bad. I didn't put soil on this list. Uh If you go to look at a house, take a shovel and see how much topsoil is there. You would not believe the amount of work it takes to convert nasty soil into good fertile soil. It's an extremely intensive and very important process. The the quality of the soil on a property might be the most valuable thing about it. You can build a house real quick comparatively and cost wise even uh soil is really hard to build. It takes a long time . It takes a lot of money, takes a lot of diesel fuel and a tractor. Ok. What's the population per square mile in the area? So you can look at this in a state. But in a specific area, if you're in a suburb neighborhood that's located in, you know, a wasteland, it's not as good as just being in the wasteland . A very important question is what are you going to do for work? And these properties I'm gonna show you odds are there's nothing for you to do there unless you can work remotely with remote work. There are considerations that I wish I had a magic solution to, for example, in the particular place that we live. Um I work remote and it's wonderful, but I am so dependent on high speed internet and the only thing that works out here is Starlink. And so if something happened with that or if it just got insanely expensive, um, that's definitely a single point of failure for me right now. And I would love to have an alternative and I don't have one. So, and they, I just got an email this morning that they jacked up the price of another 10 bucks a month, which is fine. I don't mind. Um, but I, I am very much on the hook with them. So things to think about. Um, if you are not working remotely and you do sort out a job one. So the one of the best things you can do right now is be self employed if you can find out a gig that meets your needs. Um The issue is the areas I'm gonna show you are so rural. Who are your customers going to be like, you're not gonna be able to have a bakery in the middle of nowhere . For example, the other thing is a lot of these situations are going to make you very um dependent on inexpensive fuel for driving. And I should just say inexpensive driving costs. It is very likely that in the near future we will see targeted taxes for internal combustion engines and um other things changes to electric bills and stuff that, that make any kind of transportation way more expensive than it is right now, even with the explosion in the cost of gas and diesel, uh it's, it's going to get worse. Uh, over time, it might get slightly better in the short term. Don't call me a liar if that happens, but the long term trend is going to be bad. So these are things that you have to think about in addition to that is the idea or the que the question of how you're getting your food. And that's one of the important things about growing your own and just to squash any illusions, you have one thing you need to understand is that uh a garden in Wyoming is not gonna produce what a garden in. Um, I don't know Georgia produces or Maryland. It's not just the rain or the soil, it's the cool nights, the short season and the, the, it's um, it's really hard to grow the same volume and certainly the same types of crops. And I'm telling you, I've tried it, I have tried it now, I know folks with greenhouses in the Dakotas or wherever and they're making it work. Uh I've tried a greenhouse where I live two or three times now and every single time, some aspect of nature has defeated my plan. And it was really sad and there was a lot of uh weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth when they, when the kids had to do all the work to build it and all the work to tear it down. Actually, I did most of both, but they helped and we were all crying a bit. So um just understand that when we talk about growing your own food, you're not gonna have uh Trader Joe's in your backyard, right? It's, we're talking old school like beats is what's on the menu because that's what we're growing, not a glamorous thing. So um that's something you can transition into. You don't have to go right to, you know, here's our war rations , but it's something you need to wrap your head around if you're thinking about this because I'm telling you right now, this is gonna go into a prophecy video. If I ever make another one, stores are going to close down and they will not be replaced. So imagine how your life would change if you have one grocery store in town and it closes down and nothing comes in behind it. Now, if you have a little bit of cash, that would actually be a welcome miracle for those folks trying to get into the country. But because the property values will collapse as everybody flees because they need to, anyone not growing enough to eat is gonna have to move. So or the Uber wealthy get private flights of food in or something, but it's something to think about. Another factor is room to accommodate others. So who these others are? Hey, that's up to you. If you have kids, maybe you want to make a way that they can stay there if things don't collapse for, say 20 years, if it takes that long or whatever, you might want to make place for uh other family members or friends or whatever, but room to accommodate others might be important as time goes by. Um That's all I'll say about that. A really big thing to think about is any local red tape talking property tax building codes. Again. If you've never looked into this, it's gonna shock you what is illegal. Um And, and it's gonna shock you how property tax works in the last two years where I live, the property values doubled. And I wrote our local representatives asking them if they have a plan uh to prevent us from, from, I wanted to use a word that I don't think you can use on youtube here. Uh Anyway, from, from getting in a lot of trouble, a lot of discomfort um with property tax hikes because I'm not sure. I think there's a significant portion of people that cannot cover a doubling of their property tax and I don't know anyone who would be happy about that. Of course, they didn't reply. Isn't that nice? Um, the other thing is building codes. Um, I went through a whole deal. We've, well, the neighborhood I'm in, we've had some heartache about this, uh, elderly folks down the road tried to put a second trailer on their property for a family member who needed, uh, care. And I think it cost him $25,000 in permits from the county to do it. And even then it was, it took, I think two years and it was nearly impossible and they made him spend all this extra money on things they didn't really need to do. I looked into this to have my, my mother, um she was living in her house and uh we're looking at the possibility of getting a small trailer for her on our property and it is the same deal and they were gonna make us dig a separate well and install a separate septic system . And um those things really weren't necessary, but building codes can be insane and there are also limits. So even in that case where I was talking about a second dwelling, um many cases, you can't put a second dwelling on your property uh because of zoning or some other rule. And in other cases, it's a case by case and they can say no for any reason they want. So it's just a huge hassle. So look into that because there are places that don't care. And that's the kind of place that you probably wanna be. Uh, another thing to look into on that is whether you can subdivide your lot. Because if somehow you get your hands on a giant piece of land, your plan might be to split that up. And again, the county could say, nope, you can't do that. So look into that. Uh, finally some of you might get the bright idea. Hey, uh, this is really expensive. But if we band together, me and my buddy or whatever, my , my second cousin, Earl, uh, we can buy a lot and then we'll split it up or we'll just live there together in like a commune or something. And I would tell you tread very carefully. There are many considerations and at a later date, I'll go into this in writing, uh, about the cost benefit of this and it's definitely something you need to go into eyes wide open. And if you've never had someone live in your house before, that wasn't your spouse or kids, it's something that you really, really need to be careful about because it's gonna be way different than you anticipate. Ok. This has been forever . But, um, let's go ahead and take a little bit more time and I just wanna prove to you that right now it's February 22nd, 2023. If we go to this is not my home, by the way, it's where we used to live. So if you, if you show up there to protest or whatever, you're just gonna be harassing some random person and you can't get my autograph. I did go back. I did a lot of work on that house. Um, uh, and whenever, whenever I'm on a road trip, I try to bring a kid and this child was too young when we left to appreciate all the work I did on the house. So we stopped by and I was, we were standing outside and I was pointing at the house and like, oh yeah, well, we did redid the roof and I painted all that and I built this fence and see this paver driveway. I put this in myself and all these other things and some guy came out and he's like, can I help you? I was like, I'm sorry, I just used to live here . I'm not, I'm not stalking you anyway, we left. Um So I should have said I'm a psychic. I will describe to you your laundry room, um which I also built. So it used to be, if you went on Zillow or here on Zillow, it used to be that this thing would be lit up like a Christmas tree. Ok. There are far fewer properties. But if you go to a place like Montana or Wyoming, like it's like who wants to live there, right? Um, you think there'd be a whole lot of properties for sale but there aren't, ok, there aren't. And in fact, you start hitting the filters. Uh, there, there are clusters of population but again , you got to think about, you know, hit Wikipedia and look at populations and clusters and stuff. But what you'll find is that, um, in the places that houses are for sale, they're probably out of your price range and, or you don't want to live there. And then you can also look at satellite if you care about things like trees, but you want to look at things like where are the military bases? Because usually the silos are around the air force bases. You wanna look at how much rain the area gets elevation. So I live, uh, relatively far away from Missoula, but, you know, we live outside of Missoula and the elevation change just between my house and town is sufficient enough that it's usually 10 or 15 degrees difference in temperature. And that makes an enormous difference in terms of growing plants, right. So anyway, you can see this population strip through here and I'm just floating around here. I'm not really looking very closely, but here's a place that's off on its own. And 02.9 million bucks, you see what I mean? So 1.75 million, 1.4 million, 10 million, you know, so the rich people have fled into the country and all the prices are jacked up now. Um, here's a, here's a two bed, one bath for $875,000. That's insane. Let's go. Sometimes the land describes the reason for that. 35 acres. Yeah, that's, so, that's what you're looking at. That looks like a manufactured home too, which is absolutely insane. So, that's where we are. It's crazy. Uh, a, as a society, I'm not saying I live there . You go up to Montana. It's just as bad. So you come, come up to Montana and let's zoom out because I don't know all these little but on towns. Um ok, so what eastern Montana is a wasteland? Um It's a really ugly place. I'm sorry if you live there, the missile silos around here. This is not where you want to be. Um But uh lots of Indian reservations all over the place. Uh There's one here too. Oh, there it is. It's uh covered by stuff. This is Missoula. It's a horrible place. Don't live there. Um But this, this is actually is called the Banana Belt, which is hilarious because it's still way colder than most normal humans would tolerate. But uh lots of rich people live down here like Hugh Lewis. Um So, um this, this is a place that's kind of being swarmed also. I think Yellowstone is filmed down here. And so a lot of people have flocked down here. That may or may not be true. Um But again, it's super expensive down here and uh very populous, it's a suburban kind of area, lots of folks. So you get out to places that are still in western Montana, which means trees and, you know, you won't want to commit suicide every time you go outside. Um And uh you, you try to get into sparse areas. I would turn off the map because it's distracting me. Uh I don't know what that means. Ok. Um So this sort of area like the edge of the mountains or in here, if let's say you wanted to look at that or in the Panhandle of Idaho? Oh my gosh, it's expensive up here. Ok. So that's, that is a pretty area, dense, dense trees. Uh There's some water, it's pretty but very expensive. Um So let's look at Western Montana. That's not a, a city. So Helen is out. Great Falls is out. That's where the base is. Um But the wind blows east. So maybe like up here, you look it up here and all of a sudden, you know, still crazy expensive for a tiny little house, tiny little house um is 300 grand, which actually isn't all that bad, all things considered. Uh Anyway, the point is there's just not a whole lot, right? And then, um so that's the comp let's look at the Dakotas and you'll see why I'm saying this is probably the open option for folks. So um air force base here. I think North Dakota has two. I don't remember where the other one is. But if you look at a place that's not totally desolate. So let's look for some green. So this, here's a reservation here. You probably don't wanna live on a reservation and you can Google that to figure out why. Um Shazam 71 grand 1200 square foot. Let's look at land is a tiny lot and that means that it's probably in suburbs. Ok? But if your choice is between suburbs and Orum and suburbs here, I'd rather be here. Plus you'll get a lot of equity out of your house when you sell, um, living in a place like this. If you zoom in and sure enough, this is in some small town, right? Which if you like John Mellencamp isn't so bad. But look, if things fall apart, you're gonna know every single person that lives here and they're probably not knuckleheads, although they may be on meth, but that's your only problem, right? And you'll know the ones on meth before it becomes important to know. So, no offense if you live in, where is this? Even? What's this town? Ray? Get off that pillow, I can't see because it's covered by the money. Um But look at all the water around here, you see that. So if things go south, there's no scale on this map, unfortunately, we can zoom in and kind of get an idea but like you walk to the water, no big deal. Fallout is your concern, right. And where is this in relation to the bases? Uh I can't see, I don't remember but you get the point right. And that was just , we found that real quick. Um Let's just 12 K. Speaking of meth, what's the story on this one? So it's super old. Oh, it's a little crack house, but you can figure this out and fix it, right? Some of the place to put down looks like wood floors. Nice cast iron drain there. You know, need some work, needs some TLC, needs a lot of TLC in some places. Right? But if you were looking for a fixer upper and you have the ability to work from home or you, um, have some other reason to, um, it's a lot of taxes for a, uh, a crack house but whatever you fix it up and that won't be so bad. I see the area. All right now, small towns actually a couple of places for sale and Zillow is telling me that I like a couple of them. But look, I mean, what a gorgeous place as far as the, the terrain goes, right? Uh, organized farms. I'm in love. Look at this beautiful with hedgerows, little wind stops. That's some serious farming folks. That's beautiful. Mm. Yeah. So there's options. Right. Let's see. We saw two small towns. Let me see if I can give more evidence for my thesis by finding a, a plot of land. And here's where we, let's see what size we want. 10 acres. There's a great book called 10 Acres Enough and half of it won't apply in the modern era. But it's an interesting read where a guy got out of the factories and you can get it online for free. It's ancient. Let's, I don't want to save it. Dang it. Now you get all these emails. Where do you just search Zillow your website stinks. Um I guess it already applied it. Thanks. Ok. So talking land, I just, this random thing on the map and it's a terrible picture but here's uh 100 and 60 acres. Sometimes they, all right. I don't know exactly how much the actual lot is because a lot of times they pull you in with this is how big the whole thing is and it looks like they have micro lots chopped up here. So who knows what's going on there? And I don't have time to look into that, but here's something. Uh oh, we didn't put a price. Uh Let's see. We're looking, let's do a half million. Um And it might be just the land. So, but here's one with a house, five bedrooms , 360. So we'll look at this one, this one's just land. Look at this. So we did put in 1010 acres. We get one for 239,000 Right. So the dream still exist, folks. That's my point. You just gotta look for it and you gotta have a way to make some money. That's a decent. I mean, they obviously were really good at lighting those shots. But, uh, there you go, you got an awesome shop thing and I'm sure there are more pictures, but you get the point. Right. Oh, that's the actual lot. So they exist, you can find them and they're probably in the Dakotas. That's my point. This needs a paint job you want. Uh , what's that stuff called? Make sure you prime it, you know, pressure washer and some nice oil based primer. All right. That's it for this video. I need to get on with my day. Uh, I really hope you take some of the things we talked about seriously. And, um, think about moving to the Dakotas Peace.