Be BOLD. Especially in prayer.

This is something we figured out rather quickly on the road. 

Some time after we arrived at Saint John the Baptist we were wondering what our team patron saint should be. Several of us had devotions to Our Lady of Guadalupe and were very familiar with her as a powerful intercessor. So discerned that our team saint was to be Our Lady of Guadalupe. Back home, some of us had tapestries, pictures, and holy cards to Our Lady and so we thought: “Hey, why don’t we try to get a tapestry of our Lady of Guadalupe?” So we looked around a little bit and…nothing. 

Then, we decided to ask Mama Mary for one. Our prayer was: “Mary, if it will bring glory to your son, please send us a tapestry for our youth room.” We were fairly confident that Mary would come through and get us one ASAP. However, the days went on, Hail Marys were prayed during every morning and night prayer and after every meal, and still no tapestry. Our team thought, “Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways and will probably give us a tapestry in April, right before we leave. We were thinking the worst, as we can often do. One of the brothers on our team, Solomon, said one day towards the end of September: “Okay Mary, if you want us to have a tapestry, and if it will bring glory to your son, please give us the tapestry by the end of Fall Fest.”  (Fall Fest is an annual festival held by our church that spans from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.) At this point, Fall Fest was only two days away. 

Sure enough, on Friday morning of the start of Fall Fest, we got a text from our youth minister, Mikayla, saying that she found an OLG blanket at a church rummage sale and wanted to know if we wanted it for the youth room. Of course we were beyond excited that our prayers were answered. Praise be to God; not only did Mary answer our prayers, but she did it before Fall Fest had even started! Such is the power of prayer.

In prayer we are called to extreme boldness. Oftentimes God is just waiting for us to ‘leap off the diving board into the pool’ and is waiting to catch us and to meet us with our needs. This is easier said than done because, as much as we hate to admit it, sometimes we do not trust the Lord with our desires and needs. It’s truly a matter of trust. Sometimes, it seems like He does not help us at all and takes things away from us, leaving us high and dry, but somehow, someway it is part of God’s perfect will and plan for us, even if we cannot see it yet. The Virgin Mary is like that too, in a way acting like a jet pack, getting our prayers to Jesus faster and more eloquently than we can muster by ourselves. She takes our crumpled up broken prayers, irons them out, and then takes them to God. She desires no glory, honor, majesty or praise for herself, but instead acts as a direct line to her Son for us – and it’s pretty amazing!

Jesus wants us to cling to Him in prayer and in times of need and desire. When we go to the Lord boldly in prayer and trust in Him completely and entirely, His will is being perfected in us. Let us be BOLD in our prayer and trust in Him in all things.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us! Praise be to God, now and forever!

Team 14