A Push to Pray - Non-Stop

This year I did our annual Christmas letter via email.  There are definite benefits to that as I can include more colour photos of our family and my ridiculously long letter can go on and on without weighing in at a pound at Canada Post.  I actually emailed a printer to see how much it would cost, just for 25 copies of my letter, double-sided, colour copies.  It was $70 to print it off.  I went with the email copy!  This leaves me in a funny quandary.  I always enjoy getting a hard copy of a photo and I enjoy sending them, so this year, I decided, crazy though it may seem, I'll do both - the email letter and the hard copy photo.  It's not that I think that people want to see our family photo sooooo badly! I've been raised to stay in touch with people!

When my folks were first married, they went off to Africa, as I wrote before.  That required financial supporters.  When they returned, they joined staff with Campus Crusade for Christ.  That required raising financial support as well.  They had people all around the world supporting them.  This, in turn, required them to be accountable to these supporters by showing them all that God was doing through their support, as well as giving updates on the family, etc.  Thus, the prayer letter was born. It's a funny memory I have, sitting around the dining room table, all of us stuffing envelopes, writing addresses by hand (no computers!), sticking on rolls and rolls of envelopes.  Once in a while my mom would have us write a little paragraph about ourselves.  I kind of enjoyed it!  There were always pictures photocopied into the letter, too.

Then, on our annual Staff Training trip out west, we would stop in and visit as many supporters as we knew.  We did this for so many years in a row that I made friends with quite a few of the girls that lived in these homes and we became pen pals.  I still write these girls now who all have families of their own.  As we plan our trip to North Carolina, we'll be going to the state where I know quite a few friends.  My husband braces himself as I've been trained to visit every friend I've ever made along the way!  He doesn't get it, but like I said, I've been raised to stay in touch with people, at any cost!  Even if it means going 600 km out of the way!

The other reason I started to write these other hard copy/snail mail letters was because in all the breaking down of lap tops over the last year or two, I've lost email contact info, but not the actual address book I've kept for years.  That I still have.  So I have found myself loving this process of actually writing letters which I used to do all the time when I was younger.  As I went through my address book, I came across names of people I haven't been in touch with for a long time.  I thought to myself, "Why not?  I love getting mail.  I'll write a quick note to them, too!"  Then, as letter after letter got written I realized I remembered certain struggles some families had been going through and I started to pray for each family that I wrote to.  Then, my letters started to turn into encouragement cards.  I wanted these friends to know I was praying for them that even though I hadn't been in touch with them, it was as if God was reminding me to pray by literally going through my address book. Some friends I had prayed for twenty years ago - I realized I need to keep praying for these people!

Then, the other night, after all of these horrible attacks had happened in the world.  We were talking as a family about them.  My kids were very upset.  We pointed out how yes, 12 people were killed in France, but what about the 2000+ in Nigeria!  No one seems to care about them!  We prayed for the international needs of the world that night.  Then I reminded my husband about the prayer boxes Nancy Campbell had talked about where she suggested we make these boxes filled with names of family and then another box could be international needs, etc.  We decided once and for all to do this that night.  We'd always prayed for family and friends, but not so intentionally.  For a lot of my married life I've divided the days of the week into specific things to pray for - Monday - family, Tuesday - friends, Wednesday - neighbours, Thursday - missionaries, Friday - international needs, Saturday - pastor/family, Sunday - church family.  We've followed this somewhat inconsistently as I've never actually written all the international needs out, etc., but now, I think we are actually going to make boxes for each area and pray for a specific group of needs each night.  This way, I'm going to actually pray for these friends out of the address book!  I'm going to add them to the box so I make sure I really am praying for them and not just once a year at Christmas time.

I'm nearly finished the book on Hudson Taylor.  Certainly, the thing all the missionary books have in common has to be the power of prayer.  In most cases, God is literally all they have, which isn't to say He isn't enough, but they can certainly not rely on themselves or money or others.  God always came through and moved mightily.  We've seen that in our lives.  I challenged the kids, as we started praying more intently this week yet again, to watch for what God does as we specifically pray for all these areas.

All this because of a letter writing campaign!  I like to think letter writing is quite Biblical actually seeing as most of the New Testament is a whole series of letters!  I took it as a reminder to pray, not just to keep friends in the loop or to see how the kids have grown up.  I felt it was not just a nudge, but a huge push to pray - and to not stop.