Sometime last year, Osmar Emilio Mata left Venezuela with his partner and their two young daughters. They made a 2000-mile trip through dangerous landscapes to arrive in the United States. I don’t know Osmar and his family, so I’m not sure exactly how they travelled. But if their trip was anything like the dozens of Venezuelan refugees and asylum-seekers I’ve met, if they were lucky, a portion of their journey was by bus. But the vast majority was on foot, walking through diverse landscapes (and sometimes inhospitable) regions, looking for food and water, trying to avoid violence and death, trying to make it to the United States.
With, remember, two little girls.
Why did they embark on that trek, leaving their home and most of their possessions, sometimes leaving family, always leaving friends?
Most are fleeing a collapsing economy—no work, medicine, or food. Many are also fleeing rampant and widespread violence.
And a lot are leaving: Venezuela has the second-largest displaced population in the world right now. Roughly 11,500 migrants are crossing the U.S.’s southern border daily, some legally and some not. In the last year and a half, more than 30,000 refugees and asylum-seekers have come to Chicago.
I couldn’t help but think of these migrants—a dozen or more of whom attend my ward every Sunday—as I started reading 1 Nephi. Because what are Lehi and his family if not refugees?
See, the UN defines refugees as people who are:
“forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as a result of who they are, what they believe in or say, or because of armed conflict, violence or serious public disorder.
“Many have been forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their back, leaving behind their homes, possessions, jobs and loved ones. They may have suffered human rights violations, been injured in their flight, or seen family members or friends killed or attacked.”
(Amnesty International has a similar definition.)
Lehi faced violence in Jerusalem. After he started preaching, the residents of Jerusalem mocked him and “also sought his life, that they might take it away.” In other words, he faced violence and threats of violence.
In addition, through prophetic revelation, he anticipated societal collapse as Jerusalem was conquered and fell.
So he and his family left. Like Osmar and the vast majority of Venezuelan refugees I’ve met, he left his home and his property, taking “nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents.” And his family set out, through wilderness, presumably either on foot or largely on foot, to find a new and better life. And, in fact, Lehi’s family, like many refugees, made this journey not just with adolescent children, but with babies, at least some of whom were born as they travelled (albeit in chapters we don’t read for this week).
I know that sometimes I don’t really dig into the Book of Mormon when I read it. It’s a story I’ve known, at least in broad strokes, for my whole life. I don’t always engage with the fear, the struggle, the pain that the people are dealing with. I already know, when I read “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents” that they’re going to make it to the land of promise, that the family is going to split, but that Nephi ends up mostly fine.
But when Lehi came home that day and said, “We need to leave,” he didn’t know that. Nephi didn’t know that. Sariah didn’t. Laman, Lemuel, Sam: they were all stepping into an unknown, escaping violence and economic collapse in hopes of finding a new and better life.
That’s an old story. But it’s also a very modern story, as people continue to escape violence and economic collapse, often through dangerous and difficult circumstances, to find a better life for them and their children, becoming strangers in a strange land.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash