Lora Nafziger writing. Dear friends, I have been thinking a lot about praying in Nepal. It is something that I do a lot here, more often, or at least in more varied and notable ways than I did in the US. This might surprise you because I was a pastor, and so you would think that I did a lot of praying before, and I did, but somehow it looks and feels different here. And the prayers are working on me in a different way, a new way. So here are some reflections.

Some of you might know that I have a complicated relationship with prayer. I know some of you have a complicated relationship with prayer, too. That is, even as a pastor, I often dreaded praying out loud. I was worried about doing it “right”; I wanted to be sure to be authentic; I wanted to be sure it would land in a way that the people I was praying with and for could hear it and take it in. I think I had a lot of prayer performance anxiety.

In seminary, in a pastoral care class, one of my professors was notorious for critiquing the prayers done in role plays. For calling people out on their theological assumptions and biases that came through in the prayers, for using the prayers to manipulate situations. It was terrifying! And I think a good learning experience. I also have some very strong prayer memories as a teenager and young adult that felt exactly like those manipulative, fear-inducing prayers my seminary professor was trying to steer us away from. As a child, I had a very active imagination and was very anxious, this led to deep prayer life of my own, because I was constantly praying in the magical thinking way of childhood with requests that bad things wouldn’t happen to me and my family.

Prayer, especially public prayer, especially spontaneous public prayer, has been a growth area for me that I have worked on for years. In the congregation during pastoral prayers, I worked to incorporate the prayers that were shared in sharing time into my written prayer that worked with the theme of the morning. When I was in seminary and completed my Clinical Pastoral Education, one of my goals was to be able to pray out loud with greater comfort. One of the things I best learned from someone in the Assembly congregation with whom I worked regularly for years was how to pray aloud, spontaneously and with heart. It prepared me well for my time in Nepal.

Every Tuesday, I collect the prayer requests that are emailed to me from the two UMN hospitals and the UMN cluster offices. These prayer requests include family health concerns, upcoming trainings, concerns for weather-related tumult and prayers for particular departments, staff or events. I take these collected requests along with a scripture and theme that are given to me, and then I put together a prayer newsletter. I edit the prayer requests so that they can be read by a global audience and provide a short reflection and prayer based on the theme that I have been given. This is mailed out late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning for all to join in corporate prayer.

On Wednesday morning at the UMN headquarters and in all of the local offices, we have a prayer and worship time using the prayers that I collected the day before. I often work from home, but go into the office on Mondays and Wednesdays each week, and most Wednesdays join in the prayer time. It starts around 9:15 am and lasts about 45 minutes, and is led by a rotating list of staff. We begin by singing together, and then there is a short devotion, during which the prayer that I wrote/adapted is read. Then there is prayer for the rest of the requests. During this time, we usually pray “Nepali” style, which means all together, out loud and all at once. I love this style of praying, and it helps with my nervousness of praying out loud, because everyone else is doing it too. I love to be a part of the corporate prayers that we can hear going on, but are not quite clear, as everyone is doing their own thing.

Another type of regular prayer here occurs with other expats. A big part of Mitch and my job is hospitality, and we probably host people in our house or out at restaurants about 4-8 times a month (it is widely variable; last week we hosted four times in one day– all for different groups of people!) These times of hosting are often over meals, and then we pray together with a song, or a word, sometimes swapping/teaching songs.

These kinds of regular prayers do not count the ways at home we light a candle or sing a song, or read a prayer from the prayer book before Mitch and I meet on Tuesdays or when we have home church together. They don’t count the little before-bed prayers or our pauses for gratitude when we hear the Hindu prayer bells ring. And this list doesn’t include the times when I pray at the office, with some preparation in a workshop (like I had this weekend) or as a part of a sermon, devotional or special event.

All in all, I feel like life is more alive with prayer here, the prayer bells and splashes of colour on all things sacred as a part of the personal devotion of my Hindu neighbours, the prayer flags of my Buddhist neighbours and the increased public prayer life of my work.

So here I would invite you to pray for us too.
Light a candle, or sing a song, or say some words that are meaningful to you.

• That we would have a good sense of humour- we need to laugh at ourselves and our situations- a lot.
• That we would be brave and courageous to try new things, speak new words, make new friends and open our hearts, really open them to new people.
• That we would not get too sick, and for endurance to figure out all the things we (still) need to know.
• And that our hearts are not too broken when we miss you a lot, but rather that we can see that as evidence of roots gone deep and friendship spanning the whole world.