Guest Post: Hannah talks about prayer!

Today we have a guest post from my good friend Hannah! She blogs over at Because of Shamim, and I just love her. She has a precious family and lots of sponsor kids, and her posts have provided me with a lot of information! I asked her if she'd be willing to do a guest post on prayer- specifically, praying for our sponsor kids. When people ask us to pray for them, we usually know specifics about what's going on. We pray for people we see regularly and know well, or we pray about situations. But how do you pray for someone you've never met, and you only know through letters? Here's what Hannah has to say! 

I’m so excited to be posting on Jessi’s blog today! She asked me to share about praying for our sponsor kids, so I thought I’d share what I do and have done over the years.

To be honest, some weeks I have wonderful prayer times for the kids, and other weeks my prayers are brief and generic. I suppose many of us go through similar ups and downs in many areas!

In order to do better remembering to pray for our kids, I had my husband help me hang 5x7 photos of our kids on the wall. We call it our “Compassion Wall” and it hangs in our eat-in kitchen/dining area. I like being able to see the photos of our kids throughout the day, as the photos remind me to pray!

I also have signed up to receive the monthly prayer guides from Compassion (if you’re interested in becoming a prayer partner, check out this link.) I asked them to mail them, as I probably won’t print them out in time to pray! But I take these and put them on my fridge. Then, each day when I get my sons milk in the morning, I pray for the day’s prayer request.

Both of these are just practical ways for me to be praying for our sponsored kids and Compassion’s ministry throughout the day.

Another thing I try to do periodically is to sit down for a lengthy time of focused prayer for our kids. Many of our kids share prayer requests, which helps me pray specifically. Other great resources are the pastor’s letters from the kids’ projects! And, on the back of the bookmark you receive with your introduction packet, there is a basic prayer guide for each day of the month (you can see a detailed version of the 31 days here.) (And Compassion has a 52 weeks of prayer guide, if you would like to have a focus for each week. )
For a time, I was documenting my kids’ prayer requests in a journal. I have since lost that journal, but writing this post has inspired me to find a new one! I like keeping track of my kids’ prayer requests so that I can follow up in future letters.


Occasionally, when I sit down for extended prayer for our kids, I will journal (usually by typing) as I pray. Then I have copy and pasted a part of it and sent it to the kids in an online letter! I wish I could be there to pray over each child in person, but this is a little way for me to do that. I figured that since they can’t actually hear me pray, they might enjoy knowing what I am praying for them!