When I was around fifteen, a family that I had gone to Medjugorje with brought me to a Charismatic convention in New Orleans. A priest announced if we wanted to receive the gift of tongues we should stay after the talk he was giving. I don't know how many of us did. More than 10, maybe less than 30?
The priest wasn't too worried about baptizing us in the Holy Spirit. He said if we were confirmed we were baptized in the Holy Spirit, so we can receive the gifts. He told us we would pray for the gift of tongues and that we should pay attention to what came into our minds as we prayed. So we prayed. I think some people began to speak in tongues rather quickly, but I didn't. I did, however, receive three syllables:
da ma su
The priest told us that it's not always an immediate process and that we should pray with whatever we received and we would eventually experience the fullness of the gift. So, as part of my prayer time I repeated 'da ma su' over and over for a little while each day. It took somewhere between two weeks to a month to get to the point where I could pray in tongues automatically, with out resorting to those original three syllables.
I still have no idea if those syllables are one word, some combination of words, or just syllables, meaningful only in so far as my utterance of them was obedience to the Holy Spirit.
In any case, if you want it, and you don't have it yet, try this approach.
I sort of kick myself a little bit, because the twelve year olds were very interested in the gift of tongues. I told them my story about it, but I didn't think to specifically pray with them for it.
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