The Key to Prayer
I hope everyone in our family has a poweful testimony of prayer. If you don't right now, it's ok. You will just have to continue to develop faith. It came slow for me and the first time that I really had to rely on prayer was on my mission. It wasn't coming very easy to me.
One night however, we were out late in November or December and quite a ways away from our home in Cleveland. My companion and I had just finished visiting a man to teach the Gospel. I don't even remember if he was there. I think he stood us up so we felt that we had wasted out time. there was snow on the ground and as we walked to the car, I couldn't find my keys. We searched and searched between the car and the house but no luck. We finally said a prayer asking our Heavenly Father to intervene and help us. We continued to look and no keys. Finally, we were going to call the other Elders to come pick us up. Just before doiing so, I had a rush of faith and everything seemed so obvious. I told my companion that we were on the Lord's errand and He didn't need the other missionaries to waste their time to come pick us up when all he needed to do was help us find the keys. We prayed again, and somehow, I knew we wern't going home until we found those keys. The Lord had immediate mercy (something that does not always happen) and I looked 5 feet away and there were the keys gleaming in the light. For us, that was a true miracle; but, it came about because of faith. It actually wasn't immediate, because I believe we had to pray 3 times before we found the keys. I believe the Lord wanted to teach us true faith. It requires persestence. We learned that the Lord is vitally interested in what His missionaries are doing and that our time is important. He did however take the opportunity to teach us how important faith is and that you can't always just ask and have everything all at once. I know He was teaching us things by making us come to a realization that we were on the Lord's errand and once we understood that, our faith grew immediately and then it was time to show us the keys.
I bear testimony the the Lord loves us and hears all of our prayers. The ones that are not answered immediately are still heard. These are personal teaching moments between us and God. In the name of Jesus Christ; Amen.
