Campus Nevada: God Answers Prayer Rachel Wegner - 15 Sep 2010

As two students prayed faithfully for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, they saw God respond in both specific and unexpected ways. 

Annie Bouck and Ashley Smith, who were schoolmates at the Kairos School of Ministry in Las Vegas, Nevada, met once a week to pray for the 29,000+ students on the UNLV campus during the 2009-2010 school year. Annie, who was a student at both UNLV and Kairos at the time, said they would often spread the word about their prayer meetings and invite others to join them. 

“It was kind of funny because we’d always end up having non-believers join us in prayer,” Annie said. “It was awesome!”

As they prayed throughout the school year, they saw God bring about healing, salvation and many opportunities to pray for students. One day during the lunch hour, a university worker was healed after Annie prayed for her knee, and began running back and forth in the campus food venue as she rejoiced over her healing. Another day, Annie and her friends decided to set up a sign on campus that said “Free Prayer” to invite students to receive prayer.

“Before we could even hold up the sign, we had someone asking us for prayer, which was awesome because that immediately broke the ice for everyone else to ask us, as well,” Annie said. They were able to pray for about a dozen people in an hour.

During one of their prayer meetings, Annie and Ashley asked God to make His truth known on the UNLV campus. The next week, a ministry came on campus and handed out around 3,000 Bibles to students. Through that event, the girls met a Hindu student named Sumit who wanted to know more about the Bible. They began to study the Bible with Sumit and to teach him about worship. Within the semester, he became a Christian.

He would tell us things like how he could always feel God’s peace when we were reading the Word, and how he could feel a love surrounding him,” Annie said. “Some of the things he told us as far as revelation goes would blow us away.”

For the entire fall 2009 semester, the girls prayed that God would send workers for the harvest on the UNLV campus (Luke 10:2). The spring semester came, and nearly 60 students from three different schools, each from another state, spent their spring breaks sharing Jesus with students at UNLV (which wasn’t on its spring break yet.) Approximately 20 students came to know Jesus during a three-day period and were promptly connected with local churches.

Now that the 2010-2011 school year has launched for UNLV, Annie shared that plans for a “prayer furnace” are underway. The prayer furnace will be a group of students who pray for the campus night-and-day. It is also the realization of a dream God gave Annie nearly two years ago for building a network of friends who pray 24-7 at UNLV. They hope to eventually have a house for the group that is dedicated to prayer.

“We are fully expecting God to bring a revival to the UNLV campus and I strongly believe that it will come through prayer,” Annie said. “God has been showing us a lot about the need for unity on the campus. All in all, I know prayer and repentance are always at the forefront of any revival, and I believe God is bringing both to the forefront at UNLV.”

To find out more about Campus America and the vision to catalyse non-stop prayer on every campus in the U.S. visit their website.