Fullness and surrounded

Growing up in the Assembly of God church and my subsequent fifteen years in Calvinist circles exposed me to the concept of praying for others.  Now that I am part of the Orthodox church, the idea of prayer has taken on greater and deeper meaning.  Not only do we sinful people pray for one another, we also ask the departed saints to pray for us as well.  And this seems to be a great problem for Protestants.  For some reason, Protestants, in general, are very contrary to the doctrine of praying to the saints. I'm sure much of it comes from not understanding what exactly is occurring, as all as a general ignorance of church history.
We all believe that prayer, especially the prayers of the righteous, are effective.  And we also all believe in life after death, i.e. that the righteous departed are not gone or sleeping somewhere, but are very much alive.  When we think of these things in connection with the two millennia long practice of imploring the departed saints for prayer, rejection of such an idea makes no sense.
We are surrounded by a huge cloud of witnesses.  We have multitudes of godly people, alive and departed, praying for us and wanting to pray for us.  The fullness of our faith demands more than doctrines pulled out of the air or from our rational imaginations.  The life of the church is life in Christ.