Prayer Book Project

I started this project in 2011, but I am posting it now since I recently made some new sections.

Here is a way I have found to get the whole family involved in praying for others. 

There are many other ways (examples: Save your Christmas cards in a basket; choose one card every day at devotions to pray for that family. Put up pictures of extended family on your refrigerator and choose one to pray for at breakfast every day.), but as a kid, I remember one of the things we did was save missionary letters in a notebook (with page protectors so the letters can be easily interchanged with new updates) and pray through the notebook. Here is my own take on this.

 Our Prayer Scrapbook

I used a full size scrapbook, but you could use any pretty notebook you want.

Opening page

I am working on making different sections. We pray for one person/family from each section every day at family devotions.

For the Missions section, I used prayer cards we'd collected. Some of these people only visited our church once, and we may never see them again before heaven, but we can tell them then that we've been praying for them along the way!

Of course, many of these missionaries we DO keep in touch with, so we can update the book with their current prayer requests as we hear from them. (more about that later in the album)

I divided the Missions section into geographical areas, but you could organize your book any way you want.

I used a bunch of quotes and other embellishments. Missions pages were easy because there is a TON of travel-related scrapbooking material. 

Ok, here is my solution to prayer request updates (this may change if I find a better system, but this one is fast and easy.) When I get a prayer letter, I write down the date and the praises/requests on a Post-It note, then stick it next to the corresponding prayer card. This is probably a bad example, because I am still waiting for my sister's family to make a new prayer card for the Africa page! But you get the idea. This works for me because many of our missionaries send out email prayer letters, so this way I don't have to print them!

Make sure you leave a blank page on the other side of each section... you'll soon have to start putting prayer cards on the back! Our America back-side page (not shown) is almost ready to start a new spread! But that's what I love about scrapbooks (especially with clear pocket protectors)... it is very easy to rearrange and add pages.

The scrapbooking part of this is just a creative outlet for me.

I think this would be a great project to get older kids involved in. I did it by myself because my son is still an infant, but if you gave each family member a page or two to do themselves, it would be a fun rainy-day project (save a whole table to spread all the materials out!) as well as giving them ownership and further encouraging the desire to pray for others.

Ok, on to the next section! We have already been praying for all the churches we've attended as a family, so I added a page for churches. I just printed pictures of the churches, but you could use a bulletin, magnet, or anything you like! (Note: I just realized I need to update our church with a picture of the new building we just completed!)

And then a page for other ministries. These are the schools we've attended and the camps where Charlie and I have worked. Think about the people who YOU pray for on a regular basis, and make a page for them!

Last section
(note, the next two pictures are sideways... I tried several times to flip them, but even though they are right-side-up on my computer, they always upload sideways)

If your family sends out picture-style Christmas cards, that would be a good way to update this section.

Right now I also have a list of extended family members that we pray for (all our aunts, uncles, cousins and their families), but that list contains over 40 families, so I only have pages for our parents and siblings.

And that's it... for now! I will update this blog post with new pages as I add them. With the 4 sections (Missions, Churches, Other Ministries, and Family) it is not hard to pray for one family/person/organization from each section every day. Especially if you have more older kids who can pray as well. We also keep our Church Directory and Deacon Care Group list with this book and use the same Post-It flagging system to keep our place as we pray through them. As far as specific week-to-week requests, I just keep a prayer journal with prayer requests on one page and praises on the other that I use in my personal devotions. I'll let you know if I come up with a more "creative" way to do that, as well. :)

Thanks for reading.