What Makes It All Come Together

My new ward is a good mix of a lot of things. Thrown into that mix are quite a number of home schoolers. I know that not everyone out there thinks that home schooling is a great idea, but this is something that I am very interested in, so I have been visiting the home schooling moms in my ward and finding out why they do what they do and how they make home schooling work for them. This is not a post about home schooling, by the way. I learned something from one of these moms that I think is valuable for everyone, whether or not you choose to homeschool. I wanted to share. I'm not saying that this exact method will work for everyone or is what everyone needs to do, but there are some really valuable ideas in what she shared with me.

This mom that I visited had been homeschooling for a long time and felt like it was not working like she wanted it to. She said she tried many different methods, but nothing really worked until she learned to pray. Once she figured out how to really communicate with our Heavenly Father, everything started to work.

She keeps a prayer journal that she shared with me. She organizes it in a specific way and uses it while she prays. She said that if she were the Primary President, she would go to each presidency meeting with a specific agenda. So, when she prays, she has an agenda, which is written in her prayer journal. She does not write a new agenda every day. She keeps the same agenda for a few weeks and lets that agenda guide her prayers.

Agenda Item #1: After addressing Heavenly Father, she always bears her testimony. This acknowledges God ("hallowed be thy name") and invites the Spirit immediately into her prayer.

Agenda Item #2: She has a list of people outside of her immediate familywho need her prayers in her behalf. Some days she prays for each one individually. Some days she asks for a blessing for all the people on her list.

Agenda Item #3: Gratitude. She expresses gratitude to the Lord for the blessings he has given to her, including trials. Gratitude for trials helps her to see what she is learning and how the Lord is turning her weaknesses into strengths. She frequently records the things she is grateful for in her prayer journal so that she is able to see the "tender mercies" of the Lord as he answers her prayers. (There's a great article about gratitude in the March Ensign.)

Agenda Item #4: Self. She prays for the things that she most needs, attributes that she wants to develop, goals that she needs help accomplishing.

Agenda Item #5: Husband. She prays for the things that her husband most needs and for his success in reaching his goals and his potential.

Agenda Item #6- . . . : Children. She prays for each individual child and their specific needs, difficulties, goals, etc.

Final Agenda Item: Temporal Blessings. She prays for the things her family is in need of. She is very specific. If they are short of money but someone really needs new shoes, she prays for shoes. Specific needs that they cannot meet themselves are what she brings to the Lord.

This is a big list. This is time consuming. She does not do this twice each day. She generally does this in the morning and tries, throughout the day, to keep a prayer in her heart. In the evening she prays briefly to thank him for his blessings and tender mercies.

What this idea is, to me, is a way to help us counsel with the Lord in all our doings. And I know it works. I am still in the beginning stages of finding how this works for me and finding what I need to do to communicate effectively with the Lord. It is something I've struggled with my whole life. However, I decided to give this a try after talking with this woman. I was worried. There were two and a half weeks left in March and we had very little grocery money left. I prayed that I could plan a menu that would fit in the budget and find the necessary food at reasonable prices. I carefully planned a menu and went through the ads. I comparison shopped as much as I could and found the cheapest prices. Then I went shopping at Walmart because they match all the ads. I was blessed to spend way less than I ever do at the store and bought the food that we needed for two weeks. We are not eating gourmet, but we are eating healthy, tasty, inexpensive food, and my prayer was answered. I am excited to counsel with the Lord and receive his help as I try to help my children gain testimonies and my husband reach his potential.

Any good ideas out there on how to help little kids improve on their prayers. If you think about it there are a lot of prayers said during the day from morning prayers to meal time prayers to family prayers and night prayers so at times i think that they are just going through the motions. I have noticed that the kids have a very hard time thinking of new things to say each time. With a some exceptions I can probably tell you exactly what they will say.
I have tried to hold up six or seven fingers during a prayer and when they say something new I put a finger down. I got thinking about this and this makes them not close their eyes and bow their heads. I am also kept from doing so as well. So I guess what I am asking is how do you help kids say meaningful prayers that don't contain the same five repetitive things and also ways to encourage them to kneel reverently each time? Any ideas? By the way this is Bryan posting this time.