Milford students Pray it Forward

By RENEE WEBB, Globe editor
March 9, 2006

MILFORD - Students in the parish religious education program at St. Joseph's Church in Milford are participating in a project that encourages them to Pray it Forward.

Karen Schwaller, DRE at St. Joseph's, created the project.

"I really like the movie Pay it Forward. There are a lot of good messages that the movie brings out," she explained. "When we were trying to think of something that we could do with our students for the year, that movie title kept coming up and I thought that we could tie into that title."

Thus was the birth of the Pray it Forward prayer incentive project.

"It is something we use to help the students remember to say their prayers and keep track of them. The parents are involved by signing the cards," she said.

Every prayer that is prayed by the students earns mileage. For instance, the Our Father earns 1.5 miles, the Nicene Creed is worth 2 miles, the rosary is worth 5 miles and so on. Using a map of the diocese, routes are tracked through Northwest Iowa.

At the start of classes last fall, the DRE had explained to the students that they wanted to pray across the diocese from north to south and from east to west.

"We thought it would take all year for the kids to do that and they got it done the first week," said Schwaller. That first week, the students prayed more than 385 miles.

Each week, the students keep track of the prayers they say at home and by having the parents sign the cards, it makes it somewhat of a family event. The students turn in their cards to their religious education teachers at the start of class and then Schwaller adds up the mileage.

"We make a route across the diocese and that is a way for the kids to learn the different towns that are in the diocese," she said. Generally they start a route taking a highway from west to east and/or north to south. Sometimes they take a diagonal route through the diocese. Towns along the highway route with Catholic churches are identified.

After she spoke to the students about the upcoming summer camp, Camp CAYOCA, Schwaller noted that many of the students wanted to know where Pomeroy and Twin Lakes were located on the map.

While the main focus of the project is for use at home, Schwaller noted that if the students pray in religious education class they have also been keeping count of those prayers as well.

So far they have logged over 5,000 miles by Praying it Forward. They have maps in the classrooms and one is displayed in the hallway along with the cards made out of construction paper that are decorated with a road pattern. This way the students have a visual that affirms their prayerful efforts.

The students have really begun to think about prayers as a result of the project. Schwaller acknowledged that when the project was initiated, she hadn't assigned mileage to all of the prayers. Expansion in the project came about as a result of students asking if certain prayers like the rosary and spontaneous prayer could count for mileage. The DRE is pleased that the students took the initiative to investigate the various prayer options.

Pray it Forward will wrap up in late March, but Schwaller hopes that its impact will be long lasting. Since they have done this on a weekly basis for the last several months it is possible that it has helped to establish a routine in the prayer life of not only the children, but also families.

"I hope this helps the students realize that they can pray anytime, anywhere and that God will always be there to listen," said Schwaller. "It's good to instill in the children the need to pray. They have learned that there are a lot of forms of prayer and that they all count. For the Pray it Forward program, they count for mileage, but in our spiritual life it counts for a whole lot more than that."