We spotted land this morning, and will probably be arriving soon. Figured I’d write up this post real quick because once we’re on land, it’ll probably be a lot of work to find a place, get things set up, and get settled. So it’ll be awhile before I can post again. Just wanted to let every one know that we’re alive, and most likely going to survive this trip. Well, time for me to gather all our gear and prepare to land.
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| Sorry quality ain't great. This is really zoomed in. |
Good news, we’re still alive. The storm has passed. And I guess God put me back in my place...again. Here’s the full story.
So two posts ago, I mentioned I was going to see if we could have some fun on the boat. Ahijah, true to expectation, taught us some good songs. We broke out the wine and we started to dance. It was the best time we’d had in weeks. Nephi, however, saw people having fun and decided God doesn’t like fun, and so we’d better stop it. I get that we need to obey God, but we need balance in our lives. People need time to unwind, and I don’t think Nephi gets that.
Anyway, he ripped into us for singing, dancing, and a few of Ahijah’s slightly off-color jokes. And normally I’m used to that, and can deal with it. And normally, none of us ever have more than a moderate amount of wine at a time. But we did get a bit to free with the wine, and Nephi’s self-righteousness came off as extra abrasive, so Laman and I told him off and tied him up on the ship so he’d leave us alone. We basically put him in a time out. Once he cooled off, we planned to let him go.
Nephi had been doing a lot of the steering up to that point (shocker, I know), so with him tied up, Laman went to take a turn. We thought the director was jammed or something, or that we might’ve broken it in the tussle with Nephi, so Laman had no idea where we were going. I tried to unjam it, or see if I could fix it, but no luck.
We went back to check on Nephi and tell him we’re in trouble because the director must’ve been broken when we tied him up, and asked him if he had the tools he needed to fix it. Rather than be a team player, he just lit into us again and said the director stopped working because of our wickedness. At that point we decided he hadn’t cooled off enough to come out of time out.
Because we didn’t know where we were going, the next day we ended up steering ourselves into a giant storm. Everyone was telling us we needed to let Nephi go, and the storm came because we tied him up. My thinking was correlation doesn’t equal causation. God himself seems to enjoy a bit of wine (story here), and so even though Nephi and Dad have been on God’s side on a number of issues over the last eight or nine years, there’s no way he’s right about this one, and he needs to get off his high horse. I felt like he was trying to rule over the entirety of the family now, and we needed to put him in his place. Not that he’s below us, but just that he’s not over us either.
Anyway, storm kept getting worse, and everyone kept saying we needed to untie Nephi. After four days of that storm going, it got so bad, we knew it was over. The ship didn’t seem like it could take too much more of this, and the waves were getting crazy enough that capsizing seemed inevitable. Everyone was begging for us to untie Nephi. I kept thinking there’s no way that’s connected to this storm, but we figured we’d give it a shot. Also, if the ship capsized, we didn’t want him to be tied to it. If there’s anywhere close to swim to, that at least would give him a chance at survival.
So we untied him, and looking at him, he was in rough shape. I felt pretty bad. His wrists were pretty swollen because not only was he tied, but also the rocking of the boat probably threw him against the restraints quite a bit. He was honestly classier than I expected. He didn’t rail on us, instead he just went and grabbed the director, and kneeled down and prayed. And…well, the storm stopped.
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| I snapped this picture within a minute after Nephi finished praying. Bizarre. |
Guys, I don’t know what to say at this point. It just feels like God is trying to showcase that He’s picked Nephi to be His favorite, and to rub that in every chance possible. Nephi was all worried that our partying was going to upset God, and it didn’t. There was no storm because of us having some fun. He was wrong. We tried to get him to chill out by putting him in timeout, and that’s when God decided to show His displeasure.
What am I missing here?! I didn’t think God was like this. Since when does He pick favorites who He supports regardless of how right or wrong they are? I never understood Job before. He made God seem too arbitrary. It didn’t match with the understanding of God that our prophets taught back home. But now I think I get it. He saves whoever He wants, and He condemns whoever He wants. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And I guess I’m just on the loosing end of His arbitrary nature. But I don’t want to be on the bad end. I’d like to be favored of God.
I’ve been trying.
I guess…I guess I might as well give up at this point. It’s clear He doesn’t want me.
Oh man, I’ve been so bad at updating this blog lately. Honestly, I almost forgot about the blog until something reminded me of it yesterday. I went back and looked at it and realized in my last post I left you all hanging with, “Hey, we almost killed my dad and brother.” Sorry, if any of you were worried. Things have actually been going pretty good for everyone over the last year.
After leaving Nahom, we started heading east. It’s not exactly easy living out here, so we’ve kept plenty busy just trying to survive (hence the lack of blogging time). And, we’re all the more busy because everyone’s got baby’s now too. Jael and I have a 4-month-old. We named her Sariah. She’s healthy and doing well, which is good. We’ve been living off raw meat since we left Jerusalem. I was worried that wouldn't be good for Jael’s pregnancy or for nursing. But Jael and the baby have both been fine, so I guess raw meat can be okay. And honestly, it doesn’t taste as gross as it sounds.
So it’s a lot of work to survive out here, but we’re getting along okay and not starving. I just hope we get to wherever we’re going soon, and there’s plenty of food there. Once all these runts need to start eating real food, it’ll require a lot more work to feed them. Oh, and speaking of runts, I have a new little brother. Jacob was born to Mom and Dad a few months after we left Nahom. It’s crazy, he’s my brother, but he’s gonna grow up playing with my kids.
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.
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| 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.
