^{Image from Church Media Library}

At the beginning of class, hand out the “Nephi built a boat” coloring page from the Come Follow Me manual and provide art materials to color with. It may be wise to not provide scissors and glue sticks until the end of class. (Providing doodle paper generally improves class participation in my youth Sunday School class. I would definitely love it if Gospel Doctrine also had more busy-hands components offered.)

Ask the class “How do you act if you want someone to change their behavior?” Talk about how conflict often happens when people are stressed and not having their needs met. Talk about how getting people to work productively towards a common goal is a very common challenge. Say that today in class we’ll be talking about challenges Lehi and Sariah’s family faced while working towards the common goals of surviving in the wilderness and traveling to the promised land.

Ask the class “What happened to Lehi and Sariah’s family as they journeyed in the wilderness and when they were on the boat?” Make a list on the board. Try to keep your list chronological to aid in class discussion later on.

1. Lehi’s sons and Zoram marry the daughters of Ishmael (16:7)
2. lead by the Liahona (16:10, 26-30. 18:12, 21)
3. bows broke, no food (16:18-32)
4. Ishmael dies (16:34-39)
5. women bear children in the wilderness (17:1-3, 20. 18:7)
6. Nephi builds a boat (17:7-16, 18:1-5)
7. Nephi shocks Laman and Lemuel after they doubt his ability to build a boat. (17:17-55, Nephi talks about the children of Israel leaving Egypt from 17:23-43)
8. boat nearly sinks when Nephi is tied up (18:9-23)

Start by talking about point #5 and having the class compare 1Ne 17:1-3 with 17:20. Talk about how Nephi views the women’s survival as a wonderful blessing, but Laman and Lemuel seem to have more empathy for the hardships their wives went through.* Ask if both perspectives could be true. Talk about how we never get to hear any perspectives from the women in question. Don’t you wish you knew what they thought and felt about their experiences? Talk about how Nephi is the one writing, so we are getting his perspective and how he experienced his brother’s thoughts. One of the wonderful doctrines of the gospel is that of atonement. We cannot be at-one with others if we are not considering everyone’s perspective. Jesus spent his ministry serving those who were ignored or shunned by those in power. Noticing whose voices are missing is a very Christlike thing to practice.

Next, divide class members into three groups and assign each group a passage to read.

1. 1 Ne 16:18-39
2. 1 Ne 17: 17-23, 45-55
3. 1 Ne 18:9-23

Tell the groups to look for

1. What actions are helping the group reach their goal?
2. What actions are unhelpful?
3. Why do you think they behaved that way?
4. Whose voices are missing? How might the story have been told differently if they wrote it?

Have each group discuss what they found with the whole class.

Talk about how we don’t have access to other people’s perspectives in Nephi’s story, but in our own life we can actively seek out perspectives we haven’t heard. This can help us resolve conflicts in our families (i.e. “Is this what you were feeling when that happened?”) We can also ask ourselves if our behavior is helping or hindering our goals.

Nephi told us that Laman and Lemuel had heard the voice of the Lord and seen how the Liahona works, but he also said that they could no longer feel God’s words (1 Ne 17:45). Ask “How would you act if you felt uncertain about the group’s goal?” Probably a lot like Laman and Lemuel, although hopefully less violent. “How do you think Laman and Lemuel’s abuses affected Nephi?” Sometimes when I read this story, it’s Nephi that seems callous and hard-hearted. After all, murmuring when you are hangry, grief after the death of a loved one, and anger when someone tells you to stop having a good time are all natural, human emotions. I wonder if the abuse that Nephi experienced hindered his ability to fully consider the feelings of those around him. Nephi’s ability to see the goal of the promised land and work towards it was a heavy burden of responsibility.

I’ll probably skip the Isaiah chapters for this lesson. There’s already plenty to talk about in the easier-to-understand narrative chapters in this weeks reading. But if we do have extra time at the end of class, I will discuss the structure of Isaiah’s poetry as a bit of a preview to 2 Nephi. Here’s how I’d format 1Ne 20:1

I find it much easier to stay awake reading Isaiah when I have a structure to look for, and staying awake definitely helps with deriving meaning from the text 🙂

Let the class cut and glue their boats. Close with this quote and express hope that God will lead us to a place where we can flourish:

“One beautiful spring day I left the door open to enjoy the fresh air. A small bird flew in the open door and then realized this was not where it wanted to be. It flew desperately around the room, repeatedly flying into the window glass in an attempt to escape. I tried to gently guide it toward the open door, but it was frightened and kept darting away. It finally landed on top of the window drapes in bewildered exhaustion. I took a broom and slowly reached the bristle end up to where the bird nervously perched. As I held the head of the broom next to its feet, the bird tentatively stepped onto the bristles. Slowly, very slowly, I walked to the open door, holding the broom as steady as I could. As soon as we reached the open door, the bird swiftly flew to freedom.

Like that bird, sometimes we are afraid to trust because we don’t understand God’s absolute love and desire to help us. But when we study Heavenly Father’s plan and Jesus Christ’s mission, we understand that Their only objective is our eternal happiness and progress. They delight to help us when we ask, seek, and knock. When we exercise faith and humbly open ourselves to Their answers, we become free from the constraints of our misunderstandings and assumptions, and we can be shown the way forward.”

Jean Bingham, Relief Society General President

“That Your Joy May Be Full,” October 2017 General Conference

*The discussion prompts in my lesson have absolutely been influenced by Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming’s book The Book of Mormon for the Least of These, volume 1. That book has helped me go from seeing Nephi as a pretty obnoxious younger brother, to having a lot more compassion for the hard things he experienced while still holding space to view his human imperfections. It offers a charitable and constructive way to look at the text, while also pointing out times where the authors of The Book of Mormon may have let their own hurt or prejudice affect their actions or teachings. One quote that made me smile: “Nephi writes in [1 Ne 17:2] that the women were strong like unto the men…[He] misses something fundamental because he uses a patriarchal lens that sees male strength as the highest standard. If the women are doing the work of men and the work of women, then they are actually stronger than the men.”