She lifted her normal requests heavenward -- asking God to give her husband health; watching over her adult son; tidbits from people requesting her intercession; and asking for her neighbors and her country of Nepal to know Jesus.
Eleven minutes into her conversation with God, a loud noise cracked throughout the mud-brick home.
"I thought it was a car," Miriam said with a giggle one week after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake. "But then the house started shaking and everyone was screaming, 'EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE!'"
Her husband came to get her out of the second-story bedroom but she refused to move and refused to stop praying.
Miriam knew that she, a leper with no fingers or legs, could do more good by praying to God for her country's protection than going outside to safety. Her husband only argued once, then sat on the floor and joined her.
"I wasn't scared. Even when people yelled for me to go downstairs, I told them I was staying," Miriam said, emphatically thumping her well-worn Bible. "God knows what He is doing."
And He wanted her to pray, so she shouted Scripture to the heavens above the loud rumbling of the earthquake and the aftershocks that shook the nation for hours...