I’ve enjoyed thinking about Nephi’s shipbuilding and voyage across the sea as I did my “Come Follow Christ” study in the Book of Mormon this past week. (It was 1 Nephi 16-22)

I love how Nephi was so full of the love of Jesus that when his brothers tied him to the mast on the ship, he was able to sing praises to the Lord all day long. I’m not on that spiritual level yet. I complain at the smallest irritations. It’s wonderful to have this vision to look to. I know amazing things happen when we can stay grateful and praise Jesus instead of complaining, even when we it seems we have every “right” to complain. I encourage you all to read a book about that. It’s called Prison to Praise by Merlin Carothers. A few years ago, one of my girlfriends gave a bunch of my girlfriends each a copy of it and we all gobbled it up. It’s so good!

Anyway, I’m thinking of all the hard things I’m facing right now. When I think of Nephi doing hard things, and succeeding, that gives me hope! The Lord asked him to build a ship, which he had never done before. He didn’t complain and went right to work. He prayed and asked for help to learn what to do. What a great example!

I love that some modern-day people have shown that it is possible to build a ship, without power tools, like Nephi did, and sail from the Middle East to North America, like Nephi did. This was the ship Phoenicia, in 2009. See more about that here. This could be a similar path that Nephi could have taken. The video below tells a lot about it, with Boyd Tuttle, one of the crew members. See photo above for possible route that Nephi took, similar to what the Phoenicia took, thousands of years later. It’s fun to think about all of this! Then the bottom video has Boyd Tuttle talking about the trip that the Mulekites too, and how the Phoenicia route relates to that.