PRAYER IS POWERFUL AND EFFECTIVE.

PRAYER IS POWERFUL AND EFFECTIVE (Shared to encourage to rely on prayer in everything that troubles us and for thankfulness too.)

(Pictures are in 1941) Before the leaves fell this year (1941) these 3 little ones were left without a mother. My mother died in October of 1941. She left my Dad and us 3

little children… ages 8, 5 and 3. I have no memory of her at all. Our daddy raised us up himself. It wasn’t easy for him and his mother helped during some of those years, but mostly it was just us four.

Fast forward to 1955. I was the baby of the family and the first to marry, in November of 1955 at age 17. (We have been married 60 years.) My dad married 2 months later in January. My other 2 siblings married sometime later.

When our first born was 2 months old, we were taught the gospel of Christ and became Christians. My brother was my first convert. He was the easiest to teach I have ever seen. He argued a little with me about the ‘one church’…but I showed him Co

Colossians 1:18 and Ephesians 1:23 and Ephesians 4: 4-5…and he said, “Well, Edna, I believe you’re right!” And he was willing to study with our preacher and was soon obedient to the faith.

It took us 21 years to convert my dad. During this time we trained our two children up to be Christians. On our son’s 21st birthday, my dad became a Christian. We learned sometime during those years also, that my mother’s mother, her sister and one of the brothers had been taught the gospel and became Christians in the late 50’s about the time we did.

Sometime in the mid 70's a childhood friend told me that his mother said that she and my mother were baptized at the same time back in 1940-41 at a brush arbor meeting which was common in those days. Our dad had never told us that, but I could see at that point in time that it wouldn’t have meant much to him. He was a good and wonderful man, but he was like so many others and thought that you just had to be good. I have seen him read the Bible during our childhood lives but evidently he didn’t really absorb the story-line of it.

But I believed the class-mate because at the time that would have happened, we lived close to the Hall’s who were members of the church, although I have no memory of that 3rd year of my life. I was amazed and happy! And I believed it because when we had moved back to our home town in 1960, that classmate’s parents were very elderly, but still living and were members of the church of Christ here also.

It’s awesome to think of my mother praying after she became a Christian, that Daddy, me and my brother and later his wife, and our sister and her children would someday learn the truth and be converted to Christ. (23 in all after Bobby and me, including Bobby's mother) A few of the others have fallen away but my immediate family and including my dad and step-mother were faithful and mine has grown to include our two children, our 3 grandchildren and two of them are married and married Christians and are raising up their 6 (going on 7) little ones up for Christ.

I can imagine my mother praying for all of us to learn the truth, as she lay dying…but am wondering if she ever visualized in her mind just how wide spread it would become. It’s amazing to me and I’ll always be so thankful for the power of prayer and that God allows us to communicate our greatest fears, hopes and dreams to Him. My prayer today is the nieces and nephews that fell away will come back and that the rest of us will stay faithful and we will not lose even one as we wait for time to end.