Respected Fathers, Teachers, Our Beloved Parents and My Dear Friends

Respected Fathers, Teachers, our beloved parents and my dear friends.

I ask for your faith and prayers as we consider a vitally important key to our happiness and success in life. I speak this afternoon on the importance and power of family prayer.

Our Father in Heaven wants us to have strong, loving families. One of the great guidance he has given us to achieve this is the family prayer.

Prayer is the life-breath and heartbeat of a truly Christian home. It's also one of the best ways to help our family thrive. When we pray together, each member of the family learns what it means to be intimate with God. When we see answers to prayer, we experience the almighty’s love and his presence in our daily lives.

For this reason, I'd suggest that there's no time like the present to introduce to the mystery, joy, and excitement of prayer.

We come to this earth charged with a mission: to learn to love and serve one another. To best help us to accomplish this, God has placed us in families, for he knows that is where we can best learn to overcome selfishness and pride and to sacrifice for others and to make happiness and helpfulness and humility and love the very essence of our character.

Listen to the admonition of the Saviour in Third Nephi: “Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed.” (3 Ne. 18:21.)

Let us think of the power for good as we gather together and thank God for all of his blessings.

But what is family prayer? It is not simply individual prayer, not the altar of the closet; but the home-altar, around which all the members gather morning and evening, as a family-unit, with one heart, one faith and one hope, to commune with God and supplicate his mercy.

As it is said - "Hold the little hands in prayer, teach the weak knees their kneeling; Let him see thee speaking to thy God; he will not forget it afterwards; When old and grey will he feelingly remember a mother's tender piety, And the touching recollection of her prayers shall arrest the strong man in his sin!" – Thank you!