Our family prayer journal

I had a few comments on Facebook about our family prayer journal, so I thought I would share the details with you. It has filled 2 needs for us...first, how to begin praying on a daily basis for all of our family and friends. This is an area where I struggled in consistency and I really wanted to set forth a good example for my children. Also, what to do with those beautiful pictures that we receive at Christmas? We used to put them on our refrigerator but we were running out of room.

This fall I came across a Mead Primary Journal in the clearance aisle at our local Wal-Mart. It is a composition book with a 1/3 of the page blank for the child to draw a picture. I have had it sitting on my shelf for a special use and I found one!! I use the unlined area to mount the pictures or prayer cards. And in the space below I have written the name, family members and any prayer needs I know of.

I have designated 3 pages for each day (6 pages front & back). The first page is for family members. I have included parents, siblings, aunts & uncles and any cousins we have kept in touch with. This adds up to quite a few in our family: my Dad has 6 brothers and sisters alone!

Next, we have civil and governmental leaders. Some we included are U.S. President, V.President, U.S Rep, U.S. Senator, State Rep. State Senator, Sheriff, police men, firemen, IA Family Policy Center, NICHE (our State homeschool group), etc. Because of the past election we have become more involved with our local political party and have been able to meet face-to-face many of our leaders. I look forward to the day when one of the boys walk up to one of them and shake their hand and tell them they have been praying for them. If you do not know the names of some of your leaders, please begin to do so. We need to be watchful and in prayer for our nation. When I ran out of names I began adding those who we rub shoulders with each day: our mail man, our vendors and salesman for our business, the librarians, the "box lady" (We have a center we take our boxes to for recycling. I have made a point to get to know Rhonda who works there so we can witness to her. The boys even sang to her at Christmas.)

On the third page of each day are our church families. We have a smaller church so we can cover all our families in 1 month. The fourth page is for friends. This is where a lot of the Christmas pictures went. :) I always felt badly when I started receiving Christmas cards and realized I hadn't kept in touch throughout the year. Now we can keep the friends fresh in our minds each month. I may also find the time to drop them an e-mail or card near the day we pray for them.

And on the fifth page are missionaries. Their prayer cards get mounted on the top of the page and their current prayer requests are written below. We have 3 families we have chosen to begin praying for that are not a part of our church list and the rest are missionaries from our church. My goal is to write those for whom I do not have prayer cards and request them so that we can begin to put more faces to names. Perhaps I may help the boys to find pen pals from these families too.

We still may tweak our system a bit. Sometimes I wonder if I have too many on our list? But then we have 5 boys, so each of us takes one page with some getting prayed for twice. It has been encouraging to hear our little ones pray. They used to get stuck praying the same words over again and over again, now they hear a name or see a face they know and are anxious to pray for them. I would also like to bring some of the needs before God on a more daily basis. This will hopefully happen in my own prayer time, which still needs some work of its own. I would welcome your suggestions on that.

'I thank my God, making mention of you always in my prayers," Philemon 1:4