La prière

With Mother's Day just around the corner the mission is all a buzz as we prepare to call home for the first time in a while (in order to help maintain focus and avoid feelings of homesickness, as missionaries we only call home twice a year, Mother's Day and Christmas). For the past few day's I have been thinking a lot about what I am going to share with my family. Since I do write home every week I feel as though all of the stories, at least the good ones, have already been told... So what am I left with? Nothing. Nevertheless I know that my family will be sitting around the speaker phone in great anticipation. So what do I say? What do I share? I certainly don't want to share the same stories that I wrote about last week but there is something about the flair of a verbal story that cannot be conveyed in a written message. As I continued obsessing about what to share with my family my companion drew an interesting parallel. Just as my family is already aware of all the funny and entertaining stories of my missionary experience my Father in Heaven is aware of them as well but nonetheless He still wants to hear them from me. Having a good teaching companion like Sister Nieves helped me change my distracting obsession to a creative contemplation about her proposed parallel. Could a call home really be that similar to a prayer?

Mormon Message : Prayer

Every night and every morning we get on our knees to pray. I can't lie, often times I find myself sitting thinking "What do I say? I don't really even remember what happened today." Or thinking, "I don't need to say that, He saw it, He know's I'm sorry." But there is something to be said for expressing gratitude or penitence verbally. So once again I thought about my Mom and Dad, could my Heavenly Father really want to hear all the silly things that I tell them? Does He really want me to repeat what He already saw? As I continued to think about it I finally came to this conclusion... Of course He does. He is our FATHER in Heaven. Just as we call home to tell our family something exciting He wants those "calls" too. He want's to rejoice with us and bring us comfort during our trials because He is the only one that understands us perfectly. We have been given the blessing of prayer as a form of communication with our Heavenly Father. Each prayer is simply a phone call home where we can tell our Father in Heaven the concerns of our hearts and He can bring us answers and comfort through the Holy Ghost. We would never deny our parents a phone call, how then can we deny our Father in Heaven a prayer?

Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name; and whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you." - 3 Nephi 18:19-20