Part One: Before My Time
My name is Shiblon and to start my story I will tell you the story of my fathers….
It all started when a man named Ammon and his brothers Aaron, Omner, and Himni decided to serve a mission to my people the Lamanites. They split up to preach to different regions of my people’s land.
Ammon came to our land to preach. While he was here he was captured and brought to our king Lamoni. The king told Ammon he could marry one of his daughters but Ammon felt he was not worthy he asked Lamoni if he could be his servant instead the king agreed and said he would be one of the kings herdsman who takes care of the kings flocks. Not soon after he started a group of about 15-20 men carrying weapons rushed over and started shouting and scattered the sheep. The kings servants were scared and said this had happened before. The king had the last servants killed because of it.
After hearing this Ammon encouraged the servants to gather the sheep together again. Thankfully they were able to, but to their dismay the thieves came again. This time Ammon was ready.
He picked up a smooth stone from bubbling brook that the sheep were grazing, by he placed it in his leather sling, then he cast it toward the nearest bandit, striking him on the forehead and killing him. Ammon threw more stones each defeating an enemy.
When they got too close to throw stones he pulled out his sword. Any robber who raised their weapons against Ammon got their arm cut off. After seeing they could not defeat Ammon the robbers fled. The servants gathered up all of the arms that had been cut off and took them to the king. The king was frightened by the story told by his servants and because he was touched by the spirit of the lord he fell unconscious. He was asleep for three days. Everyone believed him to be dead but Ammon said he was sleeping and would awaken in the morning. King Lamoni awoke when Ammon said he would. Because of this experience Ammon was able to convert the king and later on convert his people to the gospel. My people took the gospel very seriously and made an oath to God never to kill again. So they buried their weapons deep in the earth.
I was only seven at the time and did not take this oath because I was to young. Later on because of our conversion our brethren started attacking us. Because of or father’s oaths they could not defend us, but the Nephites let us live in a region surrounded by Nephite cities so we could be safe, and now the life of living in the city of Jurshon had just begun.
Part two:My Life
I was raised by my mother, Ashtyn, my father, Timothy, and I have a little sister named Ada. She is four years younger than me. I am 16 right now. We live in the city of Jurshon near the outskirts of the city wall. Our house is small with one main room and two bedrooms. One is for me and Ada to share and one is for our parents. The main room has a stove and a few articles of furniture. Ada’s black cat Kiara also lives with us. We love our little home.
We were sad to learn the Lamanites were coming against us to battle with the desire to kill my people. Our fathers could not defend our people because of the oath they made. They were not able to go to battle to protect us. Me and some of my friends had not taken that oath of our fathers so we were free to go to battle to protect our families. We as a group asked Helaman to lead us for we knew he was a great captain and would lead us in the way of righteousness.
We were divided into groups of ten with a leader for each group. My group consisted of Cumeni, Ezias, Gid (or Gideon,) Limhi, Jacob, Kish, Shiz, Seth, Moroni, and Me with Manti as our group’s captain. We waved goodbye to our families as we set out to protect our people.
We traveled out of the land of Melek headed to the front lines which is located in the borders of the land on the south by the west sea.
We joined with the armies of Antipus to make their armies stronger and to help them defend our country.
Since we were not trained in war our leaders tried to find a way to use us without having to put us in direct combat. Antipus came up with a plan. Our young battalion would pretend to carry supplies to the city of Noah so when Amaron, the leader of the Lamanites, saw us he would follow. Antipus and his soldiers would then ambush them from behind. This plan was brilliant but something went wrong.
The Lamanites must have seen Antipus because they pursued us all the more. We fled into the wilderness to make it harder for them to follow us. We were successful as they stopped pursuing us.
As we waited to see what was to evolve we realized that Antipus and his armies had caught the Lamanites from behind. We knew we must return to help.
Antipus and his army was half the size of Amaron’s and they were extremely tired from their long march. Our support proved be rewarding. When we came upon the battle scene both sides were struggling. As soon as we came onto the battle the Lamanites began to fall and the remainder of them fled into the wilderness. After the battle their was much sorrow among the Nephites and the Lamanites. More than half of the armies of Antipus had died, many of Amaron’s army had also fallen, but none of us 2,000 young warriors had died some had been wounded but none had died. This brought up the spirits of both our armies because we knew that god was watching over us.
It was with this story we returned to our families to live for another day.