September Sharing Time-Pray Wherever You Are
by Shauna Gibby

---

This sharing time will engage the children in an activity to teach them about prayer.

Preparation: Review personal stories or familiarize yourself with the following stories to teach each concept. Enlist the help of other adult leaders if you are going to divide the Primary into groups. Decide the best location for each group to visit (see suggestions below).

Presentation: Explain to the children that today you are going to learn about different places you can pray. Divide them into four groups (if you have a small Primary, they can all go together). Have each group go to a separate part of the church house (or to separate corners of the Primary room). Rotate the groups every five minutes, so all the children visit all the locations.

Group one. Pray in your fields. Take the children outside and have them sit on a blanket. Ask a child to read Alma 34:20. “Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks.”

Ask the children what they think it means to “cry in your fields.” Help them understand that the people were farmers or shepherds and the field is where they worked. This scripture told the people in the scriptures to pray over their work. For our parents the “field” might be a field, their office, shop, or home. For children the “field” might be school. Tell a personal story about how prayer helped you at school or work or you could tell the following story:

José felt Carmella nudge his ribs. “We’re going to be late for school!”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to go, anyway.”

“Why not?” Carmella’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “You like school.”

José sighed. “We’re having a review test in math today, and I’m afraid I’ll forget everything.”

Soon the children were waiting in the car for their father. When he got in and turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. The car just sat there.

“It’s probably the battery,” he said. He went back into the house to call an auto repair shop.

The bright blue tow truck arrived very quickly. Jim’s Auto Service was printed in red letters on its door. Out jumped a smiling man in a red cap and blue coveralls.

“Now then, let’s see if we can get you folks on your way,” he boomed, looking under the hood.

“Is it broken?” asked José.

Jim shook his head. “Nope. It just needs a jump-start.”

“A jump-start!” Carmella giggled. “What a funny name.”

He hooked up fat black and red cables between his truck and their car. “Once we get it running, it’ll do just fine.”

Sure enough, the motor was soon humming with quiet power.

“You’d better bring it in for a battery charge, though,” Jim cautioned.

José and Carmella got to school in plenty of time, but that didn’t cheer up José. He felt just the way he had when he had the flu last winter—miserable! His stomach seemed all knotted up, and his head ached. He just knew that he wasn’t going to pass the test.

When he and Carmella got home that afternoon, their mother gave them each a hug. They kissed their brother, Miguel, who drooled happily at them from his high chair, and sat at the kitchen table for their after-school snack.

“How did your big math test go, José?” Mother asked. “I know you were nervous about it.”

“Boy, was I ever! And when Miss Chung passed out those test papers, I couldn’t remember anything I’d learned. I thought if I could just get started, I’d be OK, but I kept looking at the test and all the problems seemed so hard. It was as though I couldn’t move. I sure couldn’t think!”

“What’d you do?”

“I said a prayer. Right away, I found a problem I could solve. Then I finished another one and another one. Everything came back into my mind. Pretty soon I was done. It wasn’t so awful, after all.”

“Wow!” Carmella was impressed. “That was neat! What did you say in your prayer?”

José licked the milk-moustache from his upper lip. His eyes twinkled. “I told Heavenly Father that I could really do all right if He would please give me a jump-start—and He did!” (Mary Lou Healy, “Jump-Start,” Friend, Apr 1996, 46.)

Group two. Pray in your closet. Take the children to a small room and have them sit on the floor as you teach them. Ask a child to read Matthew 6:6. “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”

Ask the children what they think it means to pray in a closet. Teach them that this scripture means they should pray somewhere private. This could be a bedroom, the bathroom, a tree house, or any other quiet place. Tell a personal story about how a private prayer was answered or you could tell the following story:

Next week was twelve-year-old Caternia’s turn to give the lesson in family home evening, and she wanted to do something different about families. “Maybe there’s something in Great-Great-Uncle Gage’s old wooden chest that might be of some help,” her father had suggested. The idea intrigued Caternia, so she’d climbed the steep stairway to the attic.

This wasn’t the first time she’d been there. In fact, it had become her secret place, where she could pray and think and read in private. Her parents had said that everyone should have such a place where they could go to pray and think things out.

Caternia shared a bedroom with her little sister, Ebony. It seemed like every time she tried to be alone, Ebony [made a lot of noise]. Caternia had learned to seek refuge in the small, quiet attic.

As she sat now in the attic, mulling over what she should do, she withdrew an old World War I boot from the trunk. She pushed a fingernail into a crack and scraped out a trace of dirt, which floated like dust through the gilded light. “Dirt,” she uttered out loud. “Maybe it’s from the trenches where so many died.”

But not Uncle Gage. Somehow he had survived the bullets and the barbed wire and the gas. He had made the right moves. Dropped to the ground at the right time. “And prayed constantly,” she remembered her father having once told her, “that God would be mindful of him in his darkest hour. That he might be worthy of a loving Father’s saving grace in his time of greatest need.”

Replacing the shoe, she picked up a compass. It was old, like everything else in the chest, and scratched. But it still worked. It probably had helped Uncle Gage find his way when the smoke and fear of war clouded his judgment. Just like the gospel of Jesus Christ helps me find the way, she thought.

She stared at it for some time, then closed her eyes in prayer.

Later, she descended from the attic. “Did you find something you can use in next week’s family home evening?” her mother asked.

Caternia nodded, “Yes, I did,” she said. (See Ray Goldrup, “Caternia’s Castle,” Friend, Mar 1996, 31.)

Group three. Pray in public. Take the children to the chapel or Primary room. Ask a child to read Doctrine and Covenants 19:28. “And again, I command thee that thou shalt pray vocally as well as in thy heart; yea, before the world as well as in secret, in public as well as in private.”

Ask the children what they think it means to pray in public. Explain that the Lord wants us to pray together when we are at church. Tell a personal story about praying together as a ward or you could tell the following story:

In November 1999, my brother David and I were practicing our volleyball serves on a hill in our front yard. My six-year-old brother, Luc (Luke), was leaning on the screen in the window above the garage. He fell through it 13 feet (4 m) to the driveway. I ran in and told my mom and dad, and they came out and picked him up. No one knew he had landed on his head.

My mom took him to the hospital and called my dad half an hour later, saying that Luc’s skull was practically shattered. He was life-flighted to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was in a coma for three days. The doctors said that he had a huge blood clot behind his right eye. He couldn’t see for a couple of days. The doctors also said that he’d be in the hospital for two months.

While Luc was in the coma, our ward fasted and prayed for him. We prayed after sacrament meeting on Sunday and fasted until Monday night. People we knew in India and France did, too, even though most of them weren’t members of the Church. Luc woke up from his coma. Luc was known as the “Miracle Boy.” He was in the hospital for only a week!

He’s okay now but has to go for a couple of checkups. I’m so glad that he survived his accident, and I know that fasting and prayer really work. (Anais Tomlinson, “Luc’s Accident,” Friend, Oct. 2002, 40.)

Group four. Family prayer. Take the children to the foyer or other area in the church where there is a couch or some chairs. Have the children sit on the couch or on the floor as they listen to your story.

Ask a child to read 3 Nephi 18:21. “Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed.”

Ask the children what they think this scripture means. Tell them that the Lord and his prophets counsel us to pray together as families. Tell a personal story about a family prayer that helped you or tell the story below by Elder L. Edward Brown of the Seventy:

Two years ago, my granddaughter Sarah started first grade. At first, she appeared to love it. But within only a couple of weeks, she started to cry every morning and beg her parents to let her stay home. They asked what was wrong, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them. They talked to her teacher, who had no idea what the problem might be. Sarah was well liked, she had friends, and she was doing well in her schoolwork.

One day after Sarah returned from school particularly upset, her father asked if she thought it would help if they knelt in prayer as a family the next morning and asked for Heavenly Father’s help. “Oh, yes, Dad,” Sarah replied. “I think that would help.”

The next morning, the family went through their regular routine, Sarah crying and protesting but eventually ending up in the car, ready to go to school. “Wait, Dad,” Sarah said just before they left. “We forgot to pray.”

Sarah and her father went back inside and knelt in prayer with her mother and little sister. They prayed specifically that Sarah would have a happy day and a good time at school. That afternoon, when her father picked her up, Sarah left the building with her arms raised in victory. “Prayer works, Dad!” she exclaimed. “Prayer works!” (See Kellene Ricks Adams and L. Edward Brown, “Friend to Friend: The Power of Prayer,” Friend, Jun 2002, 8.)

Have all the children return to their seats in the Primary room. Ask them if they learned about different places they could pray. Teach them that they can pray anywhere, that the Lord will listen to them wherever and whenever they need to help or want to express gratitude.

Sing songs that help reinforce the message of baptism and the covenants we make, such as “A Child’s Prayer,” (CS, 12); “I Pray in Faith,” (CS, 14); and “Children All Over the World,” (CS, 16).

Comments on this article	ADD COMMENT
Be the first to comment on this article