Nephi was amazing.  He knew, that with the Lord's help, he could do anything.  With that help he accomplished amazing things.

He made a bow and an arrow.  How did he know how to do that?  And how did he do it so fast?  Making a bow is a complicated undertaking, one that I haven't had the courage to try.  The family group was starving.  He didn't have days to work at it, or to perfect his technique.  They needed food now!  He and they were weak from hunger.  As the other men in the group sat around bitterly complaining and expecting to die, he went to work.  The others might have gone out with their slings hoping to find some game close to camp, but they had already determined that the hunt would be futile, and so it was.

Having completed his bow and one arrow, Nephi lectured the family “in the energy of (his) soul,” humbled them, and then asked his father where he should go to find food.  Lehi, the prophet, having been humbled by his son's words, received the revelation that game would be found “in the top of the mountain.”  Though weak, himself, Nephi climbed the mountain, and “did slay wild beasts, insomuch that (he) did obtain food for (their) families.”  (1 Nephi 16:18-32).

The bow and arrow were the first amazing things that Nephi built.  The next task was bigger.  He was instructed to build a ship!  Before undertaking that job, he first had to have tools.  Being instructed where to find “ore to molten,” he made a bellows, smote two stones together to make a fire, made tools, (1 Nephi 17:7-16), and then constructed a ship, the likes of which had never before been seen.  (1 Nephi 18:1-4).

Do you suppose that Nephi had even seen a ship before in his life?  Living in Jerusalem, I doubt that he would ever have stood upon the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.  Perhaps he saw ships go by as the family camped beside the Red Sea, but we can be fairly certain that Nephi had never stepped foot aboard a ship.

Upon reaching the promised land Nephi was commanded to “make plates of ore” and to “engraven upon them the record of (his) people.”  (1 Nephi 19:1).  He chose to work with gold, it being malleable, durable, and abundant.  He made not one book, but two.  In similar circumstances, would I be able to figure out how to refine ore, purify gold, shape it into thin pages, and bind the pages together to make a book wherein I could do a lot of laborious engraving?

Nephi taught himself (with the Lord's help) how “to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores.”  (2 Nephi 5:15).

And then he built a temple!  The manner of its construction “was like unto the temple of Solomon,” and “the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine.”  (2 Nephi 5:16).  The temple of Solomon was made of stone.  Does that mean that Nephi's temple was made out of big stone blocks?

Was there anything that Nephi couldn't do?  Was there anything that Nephi couldn't build?

The answer is that with the Lord as his instructor, there was nothing that Nephi wasn't capable of doing.

And the same is true with us.  Let's remember that.