Organise this activity among the families in your church, and encourage each group to include at least one family they are friends with who aren’t members of the church.

• Choose a country. Draw or print the flag from this country. On the back, write the name of the country, the word for ‘hello’ in the language of this country and your prayer for this country.

• You and your family pray for this country and put the flag in the box before passing it on to the next family on the list. This family will also pray for that country and then add another flag for a country they have

chosen. They then take it to the next family, who pray for the countries in the box and their own before taking it to the next family.

• So that everyone can have a chance to pray for more than one country, once you have got to the end of your list, you could send it around again, perhaps in reverse order.

• After nine days, all the families can meet up. Take some food to share from the countries your family chose. It doesn’t need to be a big cooked meal, though it could be if you wanted it to be! It could be as simple as French bread, Italian pizza, Indian poppadoms or pakora, or Mexican tortilla chips and salsa. Spend time together enjoying the food and fellowship. Each family takes home some of the prayer flags to continue praying.

A PRAYER ‘POSADA’: ROUND THE WORLD IN NINE DAYS!

You will need: a ‘posada box’ (a nicely decorated shoebox or similar); a globe (a real one or a printed picture).