A prayer made by a little girl four years ago is being answered today. That’s right. You heard correctly. A prayer made by a little girl four years ago is being answered in Sabbath School today.

The little girl’s name is Michelle, and she lives in Kenya.

When Michelle was six years old, her parents sent her to a Seventh-day Adventist school called Merisho Advent Community Nursery School. Michelle had never heard of Seventh-day Adventists. Her parents also didn’t know much about Adventists. They believed in God, but they went to church on another day of the week, and they hardly ever prayed.

One of the first things Michelle noticed at the school was that the children prayed every morning. Before classes started, the children gathered to listen to a teacher read a story from the Bible. The stories were about Job, Joseph, and the kind Shepherd who found the missing sheep. After the story, the teacher asked one, two, three, four, or even five children to pray.

Michelle wasn’t used to praying, and she listened carefully as the other children spoke to God. Before long, she raised her own hand and said she also wanted to pray. 

That first time, she prayed for her school.

“Dear God, please bless the school and the teachers and the children,” she prayed. “Give us nice, new buildings where we can go to school.”

The school’s principal overheard the prayer, and he was pleased. He also wanted God to bless the school and the teachers and the children. He also was praying for nice, new buildings where the children could study. The school’s buildings, which were beside an Adventist church, were old and rundown. There wasn’t enough classroom space for all the children who wanted to study.

As the weeks and months passed, Michelle kept listening to children’s prayers in the morning and when school ended in the afternoon. When she prayed at school, she added new things to her prayers. But she always asked God to bless the school and the teachers and the children and to provide nice, new buildings.

The school’s principal was pleased every time that he heard her pray. He thought God would do something wonderful.

At school, the teachers reminded the children to tell their parents every day what they had learned. So, Michelle told her parents about learning to pray. She said they needed to pray at home.

Father and Mother liked the idea of praying. The family began to pray together in the morning before Michelle went to school. They prayed at night before going to bed. They prayed before meals. It was a new experience for the family, but everyone liked it very much.

One day, Michelle came home and announced that she had memorized Ephesians 6:1. She recited the Bible verse to her parents, saying, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (NKJV).

Father and Mother were pleased. They were happy that she was learning the Bible. They were glad that she was learning to be an obedient girl.

Then Michelle came home and said she had learned about the Sabbath day.

“We’re supposed to rest on the Sabbath day because God says in the fourth commandment, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,’” she said.

Father and Mother wanted to know more, so the girl opened the Bible and showed them the fourth commandment in Exodus 20:8–10. She also showed the story of Creation in Genesis 1 and how God rested on the seventh day from His work of creation and made the Sabbath day holy in Genesis 2:1–3.

Michelle said she wanted to go to the church beside her school on Sabbaths. Father and Mother gave their permission, but they weren’t sure about going themselves.

So it was that Father and Mother thought about the Sabbath for a whole year. Then they decided that they wanted to go to church with Michelle. They wanted to keep the Sabbath day holy. Father and Mother gave their hearts to Jesus and were baptized.

Now the whole family goes to church on Sabbath: Father, Mother, Michelle, and her little brother named Maxwell. Even today, on this special Thirteenth Sabbath, they are in church, worshiping God together with millions of other people around the world.

Michelle is happy that she brought her family to church. But today she is especially happy about something else. Today, God is answering her prayers. She has prayed for four years for God to provide nice, new buildings for her school. Part of this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering (also known as the Quarterly Mission Project Offering) will go to her school so it can have nice, new buildings.

Thank you for your offering that will help Merisho Advent Community Nursery School in Kenya. The offering will also go to four other projects in the East-Central Africa Division: a mega media center in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo; a nursing school at the Adventist University of Lukanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo; a clinic in Burundi; and a clinic on the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania. Thank you for giving generously to an offering that is helping answer Michelle’s prayer.