For those who did believe the king’s explanation, there was a mighty change of heart. In Mosiah 5:2, the people listening to Mosiah declared that the Spirit had “wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil.” Now, these converted Lamanites are exactly parallel to the changed Nephites. They, too, found that: “their hearts had been changed; that they had no more desire to do evil.”
It is subtle, but important, to note that the quality of the Lamanite conversion was no different from the Nephite conversion and covenant under Benjamin. Whatever ethnocentric opinions Nephites might have had about Lamanites, in the text that Mormon compiled we learn that the Lamanites are capable of true and complete conversion. Even though not all of those present had believed in the new manifestation of Jehovah, many did. Ammon’s missionary labors bore tremendous fruit.
Even though the story of the beginnings of missionary success is over, there are still important parts of the story of Ammon and Lamoni to come. They are covered in our Chapter 20, but our chapters 17–20 were all part of the same original chapter. There is no break at this point in the 1830 edition.