A child's prayer

Isn't it every mother's dream to see all her hard work in raising her children to do the right thing and to know that it's finally all paying off and working?? I know that Evelyn is only three years old, but I am beginning to see little glimpses of that dream come true. Among many things like being consistant with having Family Home Evening, sitting together around the dinner table, sharing with each other...one of our goals as parents is to teach our children to pray.
Evelyn is praying on her own and in the beginning, a prayer was something like this:
"...bless my bed, bless the books on the table, bless the floor, bless the window, bless mommy and daddy and Claire..."
Evelyn's prayers would mainly consist of the things she saw around her room and they would each be blessed when she would look around the room while she prayed. ADORABLE!
But as adorable as that was, we wanted her to really THINK about what was truely important and to include those things in her prayers - like praying for the missionaries, for opportunities to serve others, to bless our prophet Thomas S Monson, and to pray for our family and friends in need.
On Friday, my good friend Heather and I were hanging out and she asked a favor of me to keep her father in law in our family prayers. He has bone cancer and is declining in his health. I told Gordon about this opportunity to pray as a family for him and since we were working with Evelyn on HOW to really pray, we took that as a teaching opportunity. We told her about a man who was very sick and needed her help to pray for him. We told her his name and that we needed to include him in our daily prayers from now on and to ask Heavenly Father to help him to feel better. This weekend, she did a wonderful job improving her prayers to include him asking for him to be blessed and to feel better.
His name is Patrick Syryllo and on our drive home from church, Evelyn chimes in from the back seat and asks "how is Patrick Syryllo? He's going to be not sick anymore cause we prayed for him. It's a good idea to pray for him to feel better." I thought back to the last time we even mentioned his name. He is not a family member of ours and Evelyn has never met him. Our last family prayer that included his name was Sunday morning at breakfast. We then enjoyed the morning for a few hours before heading off to church. With it being Mother's Day and a Sunday and all of the many responsibilities and distractions that come with Sundays, that morning family prayer was long forgotten in my mind. And by the end of the day I wasn't expecting any sweet reminders from my three year old about him. But there it was, the tiny glimpse of a dream come true. That she was listening to our teaching moment. That she was sincerely praying for someone. That her faith was growing in the power of prayer.
I have not heard from my friend Heather about how Patrick Syryllo is doing, but my faith has been increased and my prayers have been increased for him - all because of the example of my Evelyn. This was an eye opener for me and Gordon to see that our children - while wild and crazy sometimes - really are listening to us and it made us proud of her and ourselves as parents.