Prayer – February 4, 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

It is strange to think I am writing my last few emails from Argentina. We are SO busy here in Reconquista it is hard to get too distracted about coming home. We are still learning our area and the bus routes and good shortcuts to get to one neighborhood to another and meeting members and buying maps and setting up lunches with members and organizing branch activities and baptisms and baby blessings and all sorts of things.

I want to write about EVERYTHING, but time is short and I have to register for spring classes, so this might be random but I want to just write about one of our lunch appointments this week,

We had lunch last Wednesday with hermana Nelly, an older widowed woman, mother of 9, in the branch. About noon we were wandering around looking for her house, a little lost. We finally made it onto her street and we saw her right away, standing barefoot outside of her house, tall and alert, glancing up and down her street, obviously looking for us, worried we might not find it. We waved to her and she breathed a visible sigh of relief and welcomed us warmly. We followed her as she walked, with her dusty bare feet, down a dirt path to her humble little brick house.

When we got inside the food was already served and blessed and it was delicious, but it was also SO hot outside, that without a fan or any type of air circulating, her little kitchen was more like a brick oven, and sweat collected on our brows and dripped down our faces as we ate. We had to use a little dish towel to dab ourselves off every minute or so.

The best moment, though, came after we had eaten and shared a scripture and we asked if we could end with a prayer. She said yes and offered to give it, and then we bowed our heads and she uttered one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard. It was a simple moment, but I feel like I learned more about prayer sitting there, sweating in this humble woman´s kitchen, listening to her pray, than I have in months (or even years) of study. When she prayed I felt that she really knew and loved who she was talking to.

She started by saying "Father in heaven, we, a group of thy daughters, bow our heads before thee this afternoon to give thee thanks..." I felt power in the words "we, a group of thy daughters." She then began to thank God for many many things. She thanked him for "this beautiful hot day" and then thanked him for our bodies and that we can feel heat and feel cold. She thanked him for giving us strength and endurance even on days when it is very hot. She thanked him for our health, our families and for many other things I am now forgetting. Then, she asked for a few simple blessings. She blessed our legs and our feet that they would have the strength to keep walking and continue on our way that afternoon. She blessed us to be able to continue to endure the heat well. And I remember that she pleaded with God that his "mantle of mercy" ("manto de misericordia") would cover us and that we would be guarded and protected from all harm and danger.

I remember she finished by saying "Lord, we ask for these things, but we also thank thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

There was just something so powerful and beautiful in the way she prayed, focusing primarily on giving thanks and then gently, lovingly, invoking the blessings of heaven upon us. I will never forget that small, sacred moment, when I learned so much about prayer, bowing my head and sweating in Hermana Nelly´s kitchen.

That´s it until next week,

Hermana Parker