Black Shoes and a Child's Prayer

Yesterday amidst a very frustrating situation, I had a teaching moment with Cole that turned out to be a very sweet experience.

We were running behind schedule and couldn't find Cole's school shoes.  Normally I would have just found another pair and thrown them on--but with the uniform policy at his school, I needed to find BLACK shoes...and he only has one pair of black shoes.

Here we are frantically searching the house.  My blood pressure is rising by the second and I am totally frustrated with Cole for not putting them back where he knows they should go.  Suddenly the thought occured to me that we should say a prayer because this would be a perfect teaching experience for Cole (and it would also alleviate my stress level).

I explained to Cole that when we need help from Heavenly Father for anything at all, we can go to him in prayer and ask for help.  Cole seemed excited about the idea and was anxious to put this to the test.  We knelt down and I offered the prayer to kind of show him the "format".  It was short and simple.  Cole was giggly with anticipation to see when Heavenly Father would help us.  He asked if we should set a timer! (That's what we do for Cole to get him to do things...heh).

In less than 1 minute we found the shoes.  In a totally random place that I never would have thought to look.  I told Cole that after we get help from Heavenly Father we need to tell Him thank you.  So we knelt down again and said a quick "thank you" prayer.  After wards Cole kept exclaiming, "Thank you Heavenly Father! Thanks for helping us!"  It was so sweet.  I can only hope that Cole will remember that at a young age we tried to instill a testimony of the power of prayer, no matter how seemingly small the experience was.