Encourage and pray!

I've started Paul's letter to the Thessalonians today. I guess the thing that jumped out at me was how he begins his letter. In each of the previous letters he starts exactly the same. He thanks God for them and tells them that he remembers them in his prayers. I know this is so obvious, but I've never really joined the dots on this one before.  
Anyway, it got me thinking about prayer. How often do we tell those that we are praying for that we are praying for them? How often do we encourage them by telling them that they are in our thoughts and our prayers?
I pray for my family and friends, but I don't always tell them that they are in my prayers. I thank God for my family and friends, but I can't remember ever telling them that I do thank God for them. I guess its the Britishness within me. There are things that we do that are given as done, maybe we should encourage those that we care about and tell them that we are holding them in prayer before the Lord.
There is another scripture that I love that is in Revelation 5:8. It tells of the prayers of the saints being taken into God's presence in golden bowls carried by angels. Lets pray for those that we care about and fill the bowls of angels with the prayers of the saints.