“Choose to converse with your Father in Heaven often. Make time every day to share your thoughts and feelings with Him. Tell Him everything that concerns you. He is interested in the most important as well as the most mundane facets of your life. Share with Him your full range of feelings and experiences.” Make the Exercise of Faith Your First Priority; Elder Richard G. Scott; October, 2014 general conference
I have prayed all my life. While we were raising our family, prayer became more important, and we added prayers to our daily habits. I have complete faith that all of our prayers are heard and answered. I have been taught well to use heavenly language like “thee” and “thy.” Speaking with Heavenly Father is sacred to me, so I have tried not to make my prayers a list of “wants” nor routine. I have always tried to avoid mentioning the day-to-day earthly frustrations in my prayers, because I should be able to deal with those without help. However when I heard Elder Scott speakthe thought, “tell him everything” stood out to me.
Now fast forward to a frustrating week here in our Latter-day Saints Charities office. We live in Nepal, and most everything we do involves the internet. All of our communication with the mission president, the Hong Kong LDSC office, project development, and our family depends on having the internet. Simply if there is no internet, we can’t get our work done, and I get anxious when I can’t communicate with our family and our leaders.
It is common for the internet in Nepal to be sluggish or off and on, but this week it was just off. We did the usual and called the internet provider over and over and received no assistance. We went to the office for more direct contact with our provider. They promised to send someone out in an hour. That didn’t happen either. Days went by and our work began to pile up. We took a P day to the zoo which we rarely do to fill in the time. We continued contacting the internet provider with no change. We took our sweet Nepali friend with us to the internet office, and returned home with a promise that there would be a technician sent right away. He came hours later, but said there was a bigger problem and left. He told us someone would come the next day. Late in the evening as my husband and I were going to say family prayer, I wondered if I dare tell Heavenly Father everything as Elder Scott had counseled. I wondered if it was silly to tell him about the internet, but as I knelt and offered our family prayer, I decided to tell Heavenly Father “everything.” I asked him to help us get the internet fixed so we could do our work, and we could talk to our family.
After the prayer, my husband and I were just talking before we went to bed. Perhaps 10 minutes passed, and to our surprise ourinternet began to work. A few minutes later Heavenly Father intervened again and sent us another tender mercy. I felt that Heavenly Father wanted me to know for sure that it was He that had heard and was answering my prayers. Heavenly Father turned on our heater that had not worked since a flood at our apartment in August. He knew it was cold in our apartment without the heaters, and He didn’t want me to be cold.
Does Heavenly Father want to hear everything? Yes, he does – everything! He is our Heavenly Father, and we are His children. He cares about everything that happens in our lives including the daily frustrations. He wants to help us. He wants a close relationship with all of His children. You can tell the Lord everything. There might not be an immediate answer as we experienced, but I testify He wants to hear “everything.” Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers.