“The No-Fighting Promise,” Liahona, August 2018
The No-Fighting Promise
The author lives in Utah, USA.
“They took their swords, and all the weapons … , and they did bury them up deep in the earth” (Alma 24:17).
Today was an awesome day. Timmy’s cousin Madi was coming over. And she was going to stay for a whole week! He couldn’t wait to show her his toys and to play together.
When Madi came over, the adventures began right away. For the first two days, they played with toy dinosaurs and pretended to be pirates. It was lots of fun. But on the third day, things didn’t go as well. Timmy and Madi couldn’t agree on anything.
“Let’s go outside and turn the tree house into a spaceship!” Timmy said.
“I don’t want to. Let’s just stay inside and draw,” Madi said.
“Inside is boring!”
“No, it’s not! We always play the games you want to play. Why do you always get to choose what we do?”
Timmy and Madi kept arguing. They weren’t having fun anymore. Timmy didn’t like the way he felt when they fought. Then he thought of something.
“Hey, Madi,” Timmy said, “let’s be like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies.”
“The who?”
“The Anti-Nephi-Lehies. They were people in the Book of Mormon who buried their swords. They had been in lots of fights, and they were sorry, so they repented. They promised Heavenly Father they would never fight again. Then they buried their weapons in the ground to show that they wanted to keep their promise.”
Suddenly an idea popped into Timmy’s mind. “Let’s make some toy swords and bury them and promise we won’t fight each other.”
“OK,” Madi said.
Timmy and Madi got some plastic building toys from Timmy’s room and made different kinds of swords out of them. Some were long. Some were short. And some had lots of different colors. When they were done, Timmy and Madi carried their weapons to the big rug in the entryway.
“Let’s pretend the rug is a big hole,” Timmy said.
They sat down by the edge of the rug. Then one by one, they set each of their swords onto the rug, pretending to bury them.
“I promise that I’m not going to fight anymore,” Timmy said, dropping his last toy sword onto the pile.
“Me too,” Madi said. “Now let’s go play! What do you want to do?”
“Let’s draw,” Timmy said with a smile.
Madi smiled back. “Then let’s play spaceship outside.”
For the rest of the week, Timmy and Madi kept their promise. And they had a lot more fun playing together after leaving their fighting behind.