It seemed we would be in the valley a while, so we unpacked our stuff and staked out the campsite. The first thing Dad did was start piling rocks into a miniature mountain. We thought the sun had finally baked his brain until Mom realized he was making an altar. The girls thought this was great fun and supplied handfuls of grass to decorate it. When they had finished, Dad slaughtered our strongest lamb (the girls didn't enjoy this part as much) as a way of saying thanks to God. Really we did have a lot to be grateful for, we’d been led with relatively few problems (not counting Laman's boil) to a perfect spot. Even Lemuel conceded we could probably make it work if we had to stay a while. Of course finally getting the sweat stains out of his keffiyeh had put him in a good mood.