Too often we assume that missionaries don't struggle like we do in their relationship with God.  But this is a missionary's primary need.  Pray that your missionary will:

• Love and study God's Word
• Have a strong prayer life
• Be filled with the Holy Spirit
• Be maturing spiritually
• Make progress over personal sin

Satan often discourages us through our physical and emotional lives.  Many missionaries live in difficult climates filled with disease.  Pray for good health.  With busy and hectic schedules, missionaries travel often.  Pray for safety, stamina, and a sense of priority.  Remember that preventive prayer helps!  When we hear that a missionary is hospitalized for a heart attack, disease, or accidental injury, we pray up a storm.  The wise thing is to cover your missionary's health continually.  Pray against discouragement, loneliness, and depressions.

Pray for their family relationships - husband/wife, parent/child.  Pray for the children, their salvation and spiritual growth, their health and education.  Also pray that their family life will provide an excellent model for local Christians and the unsaved.  Pray against temptations that destroy families.  If your missionary is single, pray that God will meet his/her needs in this area.  Pray for strong, healthy friendships and contentment in singleness.

In world evangelization, communication is the name of the game.  Your missionary is in ministry to share the gospel of Jesus Christ!  Whether your missionary is communicating with his life or lips, he must be understood.  Learning a new language and adapting to a new culture is frustrating, difficult, and essential to good communication.  Languages in the Far East are among the most difficult for a Westerner to master.  Even an elementary knowledge of a language takes years of study and practice.  And a superficial understanding is insufficient for communicating spiritual truths and defending the faith. Would you listen to a speaker who wasn't fluent in English?  To really communicate, the missionary must adapt culturally to identify with those he is trying to reach.  Getting close to th local people and understanding them means adjusting lifestyle and cultural preferences.  Pray that your missionary will have the stamina and understanding to demonstrate Christ culturally.

Sometimes you can forget why your missionary is overseas, and why you are praying for him/her.  Remember to pray for what your missionary is actually doing - witnessing, visiting, teaching, preaching, counseling, nursing - and pray for the people he/she is ministering to.  Prayer letters will teach you how to specifically pray for these things.  Include requests for boldness, open doors, open hearts, and excellence in the effort.  Most of all, ask the Holy Spirit to empower your missionary for productivity (John 15:16).

Your missionary is probably not completely on his/her own.  Normally, missionaries team up with other missionaries, local believers, pastors, and evangelists.  Unfortunately, this mix of personalities designed to strengthen the ministry can sometimes be used of Satan to weaken it.  Poor team relationships can spoil the work.  Pray for all the fellow workers your missionary mentions in his/her letters.  Pray they appreciate and sharpen one another in good and healthy ways.

Expand your praying to include the entire country where your missionary is located.  The political situation, the government and its leaders, visas, freedom to preach the gospel - all of these are important factors in world evangelization.  You can also pray that the whole country will open up in responsiveness to the gospel.