Perfect Mitsakes

All of us make mistakes, and much can be learned from the mistakes that we see even the prophets of God commit. From the enormous amount of pressure that Mormon was under during the tedious process of compiling the Book of Mormon, he too made a few mistakes in his writing. One place that one of Mormon’s “hiccups” can be seen is in the 24^th chapter of Alma, verse 19. It is easy to imagine this prophet spending yet another day scribing into the metal plates the history of his ancestors and as he is writing, his subconscious takes over and he mixes up one word which he did not intend to put in that place. It is obvious that in verse 19 he intended to say that the Lamanites had buried their weapons of war, but instead writes “…they buried their weapons of peace,” Weapons of peace? That doesn’t sound right, and Mormon knew that and realized it the moment that he had wrongly written it down. We can learn a lot from how Mormon corrects himself. Instead of starting that plate over, or scratching it out, he simply continues forward and corrects himself by saying “…or they buried the weapons of war, for peace.” Should we not also correct our own mistakes in our lives? Instead of dwelling on the wrongs that we do, we should recognize and accept them, quickly correcting them and moving on. Also, it interesting to note that no even God found it necessary to demand that this mistake be taken out of the plates, neither through him or when Joseph translated them. This shows that God does not condemn our human faults, but simply wants us to learn from them and move on.