Sometimes, it takes awhile. Ali Federwitz, Member Care Coordinator at Lutheran Bible Translators, had learned about visual prayer during a Visual Faith® Ministry teaching session led by Connie Denninger and Pat Maier in the summer of 2022. As often happens, life circumstances kept her from really getting into the practice until February, when an opportunity for sharing arose in Ethiopia - and she says "that was the motivation I needed to get into things myself."
Ali remembered using a prayer card which included step-by-step printed instructions for making an index card into a "prayer card." (She contacted Visual Faith® Ministry through our website, and Linda Ekong was able to locate the resource which had originally been created for a youth event.)
Ali reports: "This was a gathering of women from a variety of backgrounds who serve cross culturally in Ethiopia. Not all of them were missionaries but all were looking for a place to be connected and refreshed. My task was to lead two, 30-minute prayer sessions and I knew right away that I wanted to incorporate materials from Visual Faith for these sessions.
I began by sharing a coloring activity as well as how it might be used and allowed about 10-15 minutes for quiet reflection, prayer, coloring. The rest of the time was sharing in small groups and praying for one another aloud. Since I also found joy in the simplicity of Visual Faith® Ministry materials, it was easy for others to see my excitement. I also shared how it sometimes takes reminders and time for these things to become a habit especially since I learned about VFM in July and still hadn’t put things into regular practice. Prepping for this retreat was the inspiration I needed to get VFM into my routine.
I love that I didn’t need any special training, I could speak from my heart, I could invite everyone in to these exercises no matter if they were feeling joyful or broken, and that there was freedom in the prayer time to color or not, to share or not. There was something for everyone."
Ali had wanted something to put in her “goodie bags” as a reminder for each participant of how they could access the materials on their own, and this image on the back of the prayer card served that purpose well.
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A special thank you to Ali for her story expressing the simplicity of sharing the practice of visual prayer with others! The mission of Lutheran Bible Translators is "to make God’s Word accessible to those who do not yet have it in the language of their hearts."
If you would like to know more about LBT,
we invite you to visit their website here: https://lbt.org/