We're a close-knit, faithful Catholic extended family in Massachusetts — the kind where aunties and uncles show up without being asked, where grandmas and papas drop everything, and where the mothers and fathers lean on each other through whatever comes. In late 2025 and early 2026, that bond was tested like never before when three children across our family faced life-threatening medical crises within months of each other.
A premature baby — 73 days in the NICU
Born at just 30 weeks, one of our little ones spent 73 days in the NICU. Seventy-three days of monitors, of hoping, of praying through every alarm and every setback.
Open heart surgery in her first week
Another newborn needed open heart surgery when she was less than a week old. There is no preparing yourself for handing your newborn to a surgical team and waiting.
A severe respiratory crisis
Then another child in the family faced a severe respiratory crisis requiring intubation. Another hospital room. Another set of prayers sent upward.
Through the grace of God and the extraordinary care of Boston Children's Hospital, our children came through. All three.
We also know that's not how every story ends. Loss touches the same families that healing does. PrayerTrain is for both: for the road that turns toward life on earth, and the road that turns toward life eternal. The point of organized prayer isn't to summon a particular outcome. It's to be the community that keeps showing up when someone is walking through something hard.
But what carried our family through those months wasn't just medicine. It was the village. The aunties who took shifts at the hospital. The uncles who handled everything at home. The grandmas and papas who never left our sides. And underneath all of it — the prayers. Friends, parishioners, and even strangers committed to specific prayers on specific days. Novenas were offered. Rosaries were prayed. Masses were said. We could feel it.
The challenge was coordination. Who was praying what? Which days were covered? Were there gaps? We found ourselves wishing for something like a meal train — but for prayers. A way to organize the spiritual support the way communities already organize meals and practical help.
That's why our family built PrayerTrain.
We built it so that the next family sitting in a NICU, the next parents waiting outside an OR, the next extended family rallying around a child in crisis — can know with certainty that their community is lifting them up in organized, continuous prayer. Every day. Every slot. Every intention covered.
“For where two or three gather in my name,
there am I with them.”
— Matthew 18:20
If someone you love is going through something hard, you don't have to organize the prayers alone.
Start a PrayerTrain