Reflecting on a Canadian Year of PrayerDaria Nardozza - 10 Jan 2011
I’m just sitting in my new favorite spot, in front of our wonderful new fireplace, reflecting on Unite Canada 2010… What a year!
As I read over the calendar and website I’m reminded of the struggles and joys I faced this year trying to keep this year of non-stop prayer going. In all honesty, and I’m sure anyone who has ever led an extended prayer room time could relate, at times I wondered why in the world I would have done something like this?! If I had known then what I know now… After all, I had the idea in September 2009, slowly starting working on it with a small steering committee, launched the website on December 25, 2009 and began January 1… Perhaps I could have been more logical or realistic about the big idea but looking back, I now see God’s hand all over it.
I just did the math- I’m happy to say that we had 406 days of 24-7 Prayer in 22 cities across every province in Canada (except the Maritimes) in 2010- WOW! You’re probably wondering how we could have had 406 days of prayer when there aren’t that many days in the year and some days weren’t even covered- that is because of the overlap. At times we had a few groups praying and other times (especially the past month), it was hard to fill. Although the goal was to have every single hour filled, I realized that stressing over this was not the purpose of Unite Canada 2010 and eventually let it go.
The purpose of UC 2010 was to unite the nation in prayer and to simply pray A LOT for everything going on in our country. Believing that prayer changes us as we seek to know God more intimately and that prayer can virtually change anything, the idea was to mobilize people to, “Live as though it all depends on them and pray as though it all depends on God”. Every month we had a focus that was written on the website and we had groups praying for every big event that happened this year (including the G8 summit in Ontario and Olympics in BC). There were city wide events, prayer rooms on campuses, in basements, churches and virtually set up through facebook and 24-48hr conference calls. Pretty amazing.
I just wanted to thank each of you for joining us in this amazing year of prayer. Thanks to those of you who caught this vision, ran with it and did such an amazing job of getting your city to pray together. Thanks to all those who supported this vision financially, which helped us get the website up and running, print material and get the word out. The stories from the past year are too many to tell and I know I haven’t even heard half of them. I also thank God for being as awesome as He is and answering our prayers.
Hope you all have a great 2011!