I have a friend who is living here for 6 months doing her internship for college. All of you who have prayed for good friends for me, Susanna is the girl. We are often called twins when we are together and by the other ones name when we are apart. Although we come from very different worlds she is from New York and I am from Alabame we have bonded over our love for running (walking here) and cooking healthy meals. She has been a huge encouragement to me as we daily push each other to seek the Lord´s face more and more.

One thing that we have been talking about recently that we both feel like the Lord has been teaching us here is the power of prayer.

Often times I feel in The States I go to prayer as a last resort when things are not working on my own or when things are really bad. Instead of letting prayer be my first response. It is easy to just run to walmart at the first signs of a cold and pick up any medicine you need or stop by urgent care. Here the hospital is the LAST place I want to go and even if you do get medicine often times they don´t have it at the pharmacy. So we pray for healing FIRST. We literally have days with no water where the only thing we can do is pray for rain. We don´t have a grocery store stocked full of fresh fruits and vegetables on every corner  so there are weeks we pray for a boat to come and brings fruits and vegetables.

I still have a long way to go in this area but I feel like being here as brought me to a place in my life where I am daily going to the Lord in prayer FIRST.

This past week Grace was having some trouble sleeping, sometimes she was waking up as much as 12 times or more every night screaming at the top of her lungs. This made for a tired mama and a grumpy Grace. I mentioned this to my mom. Her response was get out your annointing oil and pray out loud over Grace every night before bed.  So that I did and she has peaceful slept through the night since. One night we got home late and she was already asleep so I just laid her in bed and did not pray over her. The second time she woke up screaming that night I decided it was time to get my half asleep self out of bed find my annointing oil and pray over her. Once I did that she slept through the whole night. PRAYER WORKS!!

I want to encourage everyone to embark on this journey of prayer first, even over the little things. A journey of going to the Lord first before our friends.

Over the next 3 months I want to invite all of you to join me in claiming Luke 11:9

¨Ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door will be opened.¨

 as we pray over the pretty much impossible steps we are about to begin in hopes of Grace receiving a visitor´s visa.