What an amazing journey this last three months has been. In January, I felt the Lord begin to stir my heart once again to invite students to join me in a season of 247 prayer for the Texas Tech Campus. The only problem was I didn't know where we would host the event. Likewise I also struggled with feeling alone in this journey. I longed for students and adults alike to walk beside me, crying out for the Kingdom of God to come to Lubbock. So I began to faithfully talk to student ministries and ask them if I could share with them about 247 prayer and the dreams God has given me for Tech campus. I spoke with students from InterVarsity, Campus Crusade for Christ, Sigma Phi Lambda, BYX-fraternity and more. I knew of a group of students who prayed together at a yearly event called Campus House of Prayer (CHOP), but I didn't know much about them beyond that. I called and left a message with their director about my hopes to work with them in the future. Then shortly thereafter, my friend Marcia, told me that I should call a church in town that owns a home and see if I could have my prayer events there. Again, I called and left a message. A couple of weeks went by and in an instant the proverbial drought ended and it started to rain. Hunter Davis and Bess Caldwell, called me and invited me to meet them for coffee. They are the Ministry Chairs of a group called Foundation, that hosts a camp for incoming freshmen at Tech. They are the ones responsible for hosting CHOP. I shared my vision for Tech 247 with them and just simply told them that I would love to help them in any way I could to grow CHOP. Through tears in their eyes, they began to tell me of their dreams for Tech, which were exactly the same as mine. They decided that instead of continuing on with CHOP, they would rather invest their efforts in growing and supporting Tech 247. So together we decided that instead of doing prayer for one week a year, we wanted it to occur more often than that. That same day, I was planning on meeting with a lady named Julia Morton who works as a liason between a church and a non-profit called Family Promise. I met with her and little did I know, but there is a house just about a block from Tech Campus, where a church provides housing for homeless families 3 weeks per month. The 4th week of that month, the house is vacant. Julia offered to let us use the house for Tech 247 prayer. Praise the Lord! So in what seemed like just a couple of days I went from being a lone ranger to having community and a space to facilitate prayer. We had about 1 week to organize our first month of prayer, and it was a great success. We had about 60 students come and pray with us in February. In March, the group from Foundation which is comprised of 144 students each signed up for 3 hours of prayer. In addition to that, students from other campus ministries are coming to pray 24 hours a day this week. The Lubbock Avalanche Journal is also going to do an article about us in next weeks papers.
I sit here typing and am truly amazed at what God is doing here in Lubbock. I'm just so grateful. I moved back to Lubbock in 2005 after being with many people who now lead 247 USA, and have prayed for a similar minded group of people to form since then. God answers prayers! This week we will become an official student organization at Tech as well. I continue to ask God to give us vision, wisdom and discernment as we begin the first steps of hopefully one day becoming a student lead boiler room. As we navigate the road of being an intentional community amongst a transient group of people.
Keep us in your prayers this week as students pray, 24 hours a day, until Saturday, March 24th at 5pm. Students will also be prayer walking several locations around Tech campus and the city this week.
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