Every summer for 10 days, Salvationists throughout the Eastern Territory head for the Old Orchard Beach Camp Meetings in Maine. In the summer of '06, the 24/7 prayer movement brought intensified prayer to the meetings—during Pier Ministry evangelism, during children's meetings, and in a converted Emergency Disaster Services mobile van stationed just above the Old Orchard Beach Pavilion.
Around the clock, people signed up—and showed up—to pray in the mobile prayer room. The young adults who came to the meetings from the Salvation Army's Vancouver, B.C., War College took many of the overnight hours.
Lt. Colonel Howard Burr, territorial ambassador for evangelism, said the prayer room provided 'our greatest power supply' for the eight days of evangelistic outreach to beachgoers at The Pier, a beachfront commercial strip. The War College youth also 'prayer-walked' The Pier during the daylight hours so that by 7 p.m., when the Army set up its nightly outreach ministries—including entertainment as well as a 'Spiritual Readings' (prayer) table—'much of the spiritual battle was already in progress,' as Burr put it.
'During the week we received 166 cards asking for prayer, and we had meaningful encounters with more than 200 different people,' said Burr.
The children's meetings the first weekend of the camp meetings were devoted to learning about prayer. At the end of the week, about 200 kids came into the Pavilion waving prayer banners they had made, and one girl prayed over the meetings' leader, Commissioner Christine MacMillan of Canada.
Email this article to a Friend