Helaman II, Helaman III, Nephi II, and Lehi IV

My personal Book of Mormon study today was Helaman 5. This chapter is one of my favorites, it's part of a larger tradition in the Book of Mormon (and the Bible, cf. 1 Kings 19:18-20) where fathers give very personal advice to their sons as they pass the mantle of leadership to the next generation. Lehi I, Nephi I, Jacob, Benjamin, Mosiah, Alma, Alma the Younger, Helaman II, and Mormon all included similar passages in their records.
Anyway, this particular instance finds Helaman III, son of Helaman II and grandson of Alma the Younger, giving instructions to his sons Nephi and Lehi near the end of his life. Helaman ch. 5 is rightly famous for the repetition found in it, Helaman encourages Nephi and Lehi fourteen times to remember; He asks them to remember Christ, the lives and testimonies of their forefathers, and the calling to which they have been called (Helaman 5:6-12).
I noticed a little while ago that this particular exchange seems to play an important role in the transferal of prophetic authority through the descendants of Nephi. In particular, Helaman 5 uses very similar language to the instruction given by Alma the Younger to Helaman II in Alma 36 and 37. There Alma is very forceful in calling to Helaman's attention the need to remember God and His commandments.
It seems that Helaman did remember. Not only did he remember, he taught his children to remember and they, in turn, taught their children to remember. Nephi and Lehi, Alma the Younger's great-grandsons, learned this lesson so well that the voice of the Lord came to Nephi saying, "Blessed art thou, Nephi, for ... because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold I will bless thee forever" (Helaman 10:4-5).

Last Day of School

Today was the last day of classes for my 1L year at WashU. It's good to be almost done with this year. Two weeks and 3 tests will finish me up and may determine what we are doing next year...

This summer I'm working in the legal department at Monsanto. For those of you who don't know what that is, check it out. Monsanto is the largest producer of seed corn in the world, and is one of the leaders, really the leader, in plant biotechnology. Since my degree is in Plant Genetics and Biotechnology I'm a perfect fit for what Monsanto does; in fact, Monsanto is one of the major reasons I chose St. Louis and Washington University over many of the other schools I got into. Getting to work at Monsanto is literally a dream come true. We were very blessed to land the job as well. Originally the program I applied through was going to take one student from each of the three law schools in St. Louis, but instead they took two from WashU and only one from another school. Aside from the experience I'll gain this summer, the best part of the whole deal is that I'm getting paid.

Now that school is out I'll try and post more often, we'll see how that goes.

Ben