Arabian Arrow Massacre

Alright, I’m still ticked at Nephi, and still working on being able to forgive him, but I gotta give him some credit. He figured out how to make his own bow, string it, and and then he made an appropriate arrow. Dad used the director to figure out where he should go hunt, and Nephi made a killing up on the mountain this morning. He killed so many animals with a single arrow, Laman, Sam, and I had to go help him bring the carcasses down. Like I said before, he’s got a lot of good technical skills, just no social skills at all. I guess I need to focus more on his good qualities.

A slight exaggeration of Nephi's haul from this morning

Camp’s been busy this whole morning as we’ve been skinning and prepping the food. Dad has insisted that we don’t cook the food (my guess is the smoke would alert the gangs on the trading routes to our presence), so we’ve been eating it raw (ugh), but luckily no one has gotten sick. Or at least they haven’t got sick from eating raw meat anyway. Jael’s dad is real sick. I spent some time with him this morning, and I don’t know if he’s going to return to health even with all the meat we have. Jael tried to feed him a bit, but he couldn’t keep anything down. I think the exhaustion combined with starvation might’ve been too much for him at his age.

Jael's not talking about it much; she still thinks he's going to pull through, and I’m not sure what to say. It’s a rough way for her to start a new family—live in a tent, nearly starve while pregnant, probably lose your dad. She’s so great, and I love her so much. She really deserves a lot better than this. I have no idea how to help her through this time. I’m kind of new at this whole being an adult thing, and I want to do what I can for her, but I feel so limited.

On the Road Again

Okay, so this is not (as I promised last post) 5 Mind-Numbingly Awesome Ideas to Turn a Desert Nomad Camp into a Luxury Suite. A couple weeks ago, things changed. In fact, we’re not even in the Valley of Me anymore. Dad had a dream that we should get on the road again, and so we moved out. Unfortunately, we’re not headed back to Jerusalem, we’re headed even farther out.

We’ve been going mostly south, mostly keeping to some of the trade routes that run along the Red Sea. And we’re following the directions of some sort of ball-shaped director that we found outside of Dad’s tent. So when we leave the trade routes, it’s generally because this thing has a spindle that points a different way. I really have no idea how that thing works, but it’s done a decent job. Most of the time when it leads us off the main path, we end up in a pretty nice place for hunting and stocking up on food.

I hope that in addition to detecting game, this director can keep us away from the bands of robbers out here. We’re not a small, defenseless caravan, but we’re not large either, and trade routes draw in all sorts of thieves hoping to make bank off of caravans like ours. And in terms of fighting ability, we’re actually smaller than we look. We have only eight men that are of fighting age (Ishmael’s a bit past the age where I’d expect him to help out much against a raid), and if a gang sees that, they’ll come at us for sure. Especially because attacking us brings the prospect of women, not just wealth.

So I’ve been teaching Jael some basic self-defense just in case anything happens to me out here. I also tried to tell Dad that now that I have a role as a protector for my small family, I’m concerned about the idea of bringing them into such an area. He and Ishmael were pretty dismissive of my concerns, and said if we just trust in God, He’d deliver us.

Again, this highlights my concern, I don’t know that what we’re doing here is actually under the command of God. In fact a lot of evidence seems to point to the contrary. So is He going to deliver us when we’ve shown we don’t trust the covenants He made with the house of Israel, nor do we trust the leaders He’s chosen for us? But I’ve brought this up before, and it never seems to go anywhere with Dad, so I didn’t even bother this time.

Oh, and one other concerning development: my bow is dead. The thing has the strength of a willow at this point. Laman’s is getting there too. So if we’re attacked, Nephi’s the only one with a working bow. Also, that means he’s the only one that can hunt for big game, so it limits our hunting opportunities, which limits our food. Hopefully we’ll come to a town soon where we can trade for some new bows.