Prayer as Communication
I am originally from New Mexico, and my husband, Dante, grew up in Spain until he moved to Chorley with his family at 14 years old. After our missions in France and Greece, Dante and I met while working together at the Missionary Training Centre, where I teach Greek and Dante taught French. I’m a planner and Dante is a dreamer. He’s good at cooking and I’m good at eating what he cooks. I talk a lot and Dante likes to listen. Or at least that’s what he says. I’m good at maths and Dante is talented with music. We balance each other out with our different talents and personalities.
We have been married for a whole twenty-four days now. I don’t know much about marriage yet, but what I know so far is that it requires a lot of communication. Communicating about schedules, activities, what to eat for dinner, how to clean the house together, whose family to visit for Christmas, how to use our money, where to go on honeymoon, and how we want to raise our future children and there’s still so many other things we haven’t even thought of yet.
For a relationship to thrive, it requires humble, constant, open communication. Not just in a marriage, but also in relationships with parents, siblings, children, coworkers, in-laws, ministering companions and friends. Why would this be any different for our relationship with our Heavenly Father? This relationship also requires constant communication between both parties.
I love the story of Enos because his experience with heavenly communication through prayer really isn’t so different from our own. In Enos 1:3 we learn he goes out to hunt beasts in the forests. For him it was a normal, regular activity of acquiring food, during which he was pondering things his father had told him when they finally sunk deep into his heart. Have we ever been in that situation? Doing a regular everyday activity like driving the children to school, walking to work, cooking dinner, showering or folding laundry? These could just be tedious tasks that must be done, or they might be opportunities for us to slow down and let His words sink deep into our hearts. We don’t need to be in a special, sacred, quiet, solitary space for the heavens to be opened for us.
I love how Enos describes that his “soul hungered” (Enos 1:4) as he knelt down to pray. He cried to his Father in Heaven for his soul until hearing a voice reassuring him that his sins had been forgiven (Enos 1:5). Have we ever been in that situation? Deeply pleading for forgiveness, humbling ourselves before the Lord, openly admitting that we’ve messed up and need the healing power of the Atonement of His Son Jesus Christ? Maybe feeling like we have gone too far this time, and we are without hope, feeling unworthy of His love? Just as Enos was freed of those feelings of guilt and godly sorrow because of his faith in Christ, we too can be made whole and be healed through the Saviour’s endless love and mercy towards us in the form of His atonement – no matter how far we have gone or how hopeless we think our cause might be.
When my husband was serving his mission in Switzerland, he and his companion felt like they should walk down a road they hadn’t tried before and saw a lady sitting on a bench. They didn’t know yet, but she had been baptised when she was around 20 years old and had left the church not long after. A few years later she had a son, who was now 9 years old. While she was waiting for him to come out of school that day she had started thinking about the church. She remembered the missionaries and the songs she used to sing. She looked up the church and found a video about missionaries on her phone and was watching that video when she looked up and saw two missionaries were standing there. She realised an unspoken prayer had been answered.
God’s promise to Enos in verse 15 that “Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it” applies to us as well. Do we ask in faith believing that we will receive? Whether it’s for help on a school exam; being able to pay bills after paying tithing; reduced pain and suffering through priesthood blessings when ill?
After the account of Enos’s prayer in the forest, we read that he goes and starts preaching and prophesying about what he experienced. Are we as eager to act on revelation we receive? Are we really willing to act on the answers to our prayers even if they aren’t the answers we wanted? Are we praying to humble ourselves before the Lord and align our will with His or are we praying in hopes that God is a genie in a lamp existing only to grant our three wishes when we please?
One particularly powerful experience that I had with prayer was in June 2018 as I prepared for a mission. I had received my mission call to Greece and was eagerly applying for my visa and participating in the temple preparation course to be ready to go to the temple. One night I went to a friend’s house who was no longer a member of the church. She had many other friends there who were drinking and when the topic of my mission call came up in the conversation, they all started saying discouraging things about my decision. Saying that I didn’t know my own religion and Joseph Smith had done things I should know about and I shouldn’t preach stuff to others that I didn’t know enough about myself. I started doubting myself and my experiences and my decision to serve. As I drove home that night, my car became my sacred grove. I poured my heart out to God asking Him for help – a sign, reassurance, anything. I arrived at my university apartment full of snot and tears and nothing happened. No angel, no voice, no light, no miraculous open page of a Book of Mormon with the perfect scripture. So, I went to sleep, wondering if God had heard me.
A few days later, I received a call from an old friend from New Mexico who I hadn’t had contact with since leaving for university. She explained that she didn’t know why she was calling me, but she felt prompted to tell me that she had decided to serve a mission and was submitting her mission papers. She hadn’t told anyone except for her family. I said congratulations and thought “That was random.”
A few days later, again I received a text message from a girl who had been my roommate for my first semester of university. She also told me she had decided to serve a mission and was called to serve to speak Spanish and French in Montreal, Canada. I thought, “Wow, that’s really cool!” and again felt it was random.
Then a few weeks later I got a call from one of my close cousins, Eric, who had not been active in the church for most of his life because of his parent’s divorce and excommunication. He told me that he had recently decided to serve a mission and had received his call. Not only was he going to serve a full-time mission, but he had also been called to serve in Greece on 21st November 2018. We were going to serve together!
I knew that these friends had been an answer to prayer and through following the promptings of the Spirit they were able to give me the reassurance that I wasn’t alone and my decision to serve a mission was right and I should move forward with faith. Just like my friends and cousin at that time, we can be instruments in God’s hand to carry out His will and aid those we know and meet in their search for answers to their own prayers.
Our Father in Heaven keeps His promises and I add my testimony to Enos’ in verse 17, that God is loyal and trustworthy, and it will be according to the covenants which we have made with Him that our souls can rest knowing that in His hands we are loved and all will be made right.