The overwhelming sense of uncertainty about the different facets of our life at times overtook our resolve to serve the Lord; and tried to block us from the journey we were about to embark on. Desperately sensing the enormity of the task ahead for our mission work in India, we decided to be specific about our heavy concerns, needs and desires even before preparing to move to India, rather than being vague about them. So we started to list them all one by one as they came and clouded our minds. After making this list, we started to pray over these specific points in this list. 

All of us took time even to continue to place the list before our Lord and this helped us to lighten our mental stress and load. Coming to think of this method, it was a very helpful tool and also a good exercise as we even now have these prayer points with us as a road map; and continue to pray over some of them. Looking back over our shoulders the past more than 2 decades we can boldly say that God has been a faithful Father all along. There is no doubt about this. He had never failed us. 

As parents, we never gave room for much screen time to our kids in their regular schedule and we did not advocate or encourage animated TV shows. As a result a lot of time has revolved around us and the family. We regularly practised family prayers before dinner time, gathered on the couch and sang and worshipped our Lord, read a scripture passage, and we shared our days’ events and one of us parents prayed, after which we came together at the dinner table. As our kids were a little older growing up, apart from the family prayer, it became a family practice to gather on weekends or extensively on birthdays and on holidays where we sat around our coffee table in the front room, on the couch or at times comfortably in our bedroom or in one of our kids rooms. 

We would continue to write down the points of gratitude or just counting our blessing time and also the pressing problems which mean personal challenges. At the end we took turns to read aloud to the family and we prayed among ourselves for each other. As time went by, one of us would facilitate and keep the time and stop at a certain point and would begin to read our points aloud, even the pressing problems and pray for each other. On birthdays we took turns to affirm the person and make a special event for that day. This tradition went on in our family and is still prevalent to this day. Eventually, this practice has given each of us a good experience and even our growing children have developed this habit in journaling as well, which I think is a good practice.

Even in later years, I think they have not forgotten this practice and wish and hope they still continue to do so even now. These days, there are many kinds of journals in the form of hard as well as soft copy, even online, which I think is much easier and handy. Looking back, this practice paved a way for a good time investment in our children from our early years.