Don't Forget To Pray

To my daughter, 

                Today I want to encourage you to pray to your Father in Heaven in the name of Jesus for help and guidance in your life. Oh, how we all need help from Him! I know that He hears our prayers and that He will hear yours. I urge you to kneel down each morning and open up your heart to Him. Alma invited us, “Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever. Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day” (Alma 37:36-37). I testify that there is really a Being in heaven who hears your prayers and who knows you better than yourself because He is your Father! I plead with you to pray to Him with all your heart and ask for His guidance and peace and help and love. I have seen many times the answers to prayers and I know that, as the hymn testifies, “praying rests the weary! Prayer will change the night to day.” Yesterday President Holland spoke about the power of prayer and how the prayers of so many helped him to recover from the illness that nearly took his life. He urged us, “If there be any time we feel not to pray, we can be sure that hesitancy does not come from God, who yearns to communicate with His children at any and all times. Indeed, some efforts to keep us from praying come directly from the adversary. When we don’t know how or exactly for what to pray, we should begin and continue until the Holy Spirit guides us into the prayer we should be offering.” If you ever go to bed and don’t feel like you should pray, that is exactly when you should ignore that feeling and pray!

I believe in prayer with all my heart. Things may not change immediately when you pray for something, but God will hear you and it will make all the difference. I remember that when I was in school, I would pray fervently and often for help trying to keep up with all the assignments and tests. I was sometimes overwhelmed, and I sought His help and I know that He always came through. I remember once leaving an exam feeling again that He had helped me with the test, and I knelt down outside in the trees and thanking Him for the help He had given me. I also remember on my mission one particular day pleading with the Lord with my companion to find someone we could teach, and that day we found Catarina on the bus, an amazing and wonderful lady who was baptized less than three weeks later. I remember pleading with the Lord for help for one of your siblings, and a very specific answer came to Mom on what we should do, and it made a huge difference. At my work I have prayed for help countless times, and I know that the Lord has always helped me. One time recently I was working on something with a coworker, and we had a very tight timeline to get a fix for a client and we didn’t know how we were going to do it. But I prayed and we went to work and found the solution very quickly. Even my coworker recognized verbally to me how God had helped us get this solution we desperately needed for a client who was demanding it. I hope you too will talk to your Heavenly Father and open your heart to Him in prayer, alone in your room, and watch to see how it changes you. “When life gets dark and dreary, Don’t forget to pray.”              

Love,

Dad