Today was the National Day of Prayer. Since our family is a bunch of prayer warriors, the children and I went off to the town center to join in the local prayer event. Okay we’re more like prayer serfs who are fighting their way up to noblemen. Still, as Tim reported, we are all growing in our commitment to prayer and this was a great opportunity for us to pray together with other believers.
We got to the town center just after noon. The e-mail we received said the prayer time was from 12:20 to 12:40 pm. There must have been some confusion on the details as the director ended the prayer time just a little after 12:15 pm. Several people from our church arrived just as it was ending. It was a bit frustrating. Thankfully the children and I were there in time to be a part of things.
Warning – as I OBVIOUSLY wouldn’t take a picture of people praying during the prayer meeting (really, my eyes would be closed, I promise) this photo is somewhat staged. Can you hear me saying to the children, “Pretend you’re praying, kids! Let’s get a good shot.” Please don’t answer that question.”
A friend from church grabbed my camera and took a picture of us. I’ll spare you the ‘fake praying family’ shot I have. There were around 25 people (not including us) meeting around the flag pole and lifting up our requests to the Lord.
I don’t think I did a good job of prepping the children about the significance of the event and what a privilege it was to join with people around the nation praying for our country. One child kept asking me when the play time was going to start. “No,” I said, “we’re going to be PRAYING not PLAYING.” It’s hard to keep these things straight.
On the way home the children decided they wanted to become photo-journalists, so I ended up with 166 pictures on my camera at the end of the day. Of course, many of them were like this:
Sarah was quite the little photographer today. But she had a difficult time getting the angle correct on the camera.
And, you gotta love the child who captured this high energy, action shot:
I should let the kids take pictures more often. What a great photo documentary of our life. After all, it’s important our sophisticated reading material is captured on camera.
Someone did take this pretty picture. I would guess it was Rachel as she is the gardener in the family and has proven to be an excellent photographer at times (like when we’re at the zoo).
Later on in the day, just before dinner, Tim took the children out to the park in celebration of Daniel’s Special Day (trying to get back into the habit of doing SD’s). You could say that it was a Praying and Playing kind of day. 
Kathy
We weren’t able to attend any of the National Day of Prayer events here. Our church had a time of prayer around a school flag pole last week because there have been so may (10+) bomb threats in area schools. So sad.
Oh. I also forgot to say that I have lots of pictures to delete… errr… I mean file when my little ones get ahold of the camera!
What a great day!
Did you all have a list of things to pray for or was it random?
The lighting in the picture of your sophisticated reading material was beautiful!
What a bunch of photographers you have, and more importantly prayers.
I like the blog, Mom!! The prayer meeting was quite short. I was a little disappointed we didn’t stay longer. It was very funny to watch David, but mostly Sarah, go up in your face and say, “I want to take your picture.”
I think it was a good blog. I like how you said it was a “prayer and player” day. I liked us pretending to pray. When we went to the park about 20 minutes later it started raining and I got soaked.
Cynthia – bomb threats!!?? How terrible. Boy, if anything shows how much we need prayer, that sure brings it to light! I was disappointed about how few people attended our prayer event (we need to do a better job, next year, of publicizing it) but a friend said the one in Olympia (capital) was a much bigger program.
Thanks for writing.
You are such a good mommy. We did pray at home, but didn’t manage to go out anyplace. I know they had a bigger gathering in the city.
Great pictures, too funny that you re-staged some of them! I used to find odd and suspicious pictures on my camera at times too. So fun to see what they thought was good to take a picture off. Of course maybe that’s why my camera died, hmmm. LOL
Is Joshua really taller than you, Katherine? When did this happen?
Sweet praying/playing pictures! I love you praying Edgrens! AK