World Tour and Gethsemane Prayer

Tonight is our last night of DCC. Been a great week. Last night we heard from Dong Whan Kim who leads Korean Campus Crusade for Christ in the US. And then my boss, Ken Miller hosted a virtual world tour of WSN for our region. We had videos of Russia, East Asia, interviewed students who have gone to Mexico, one of our Chilean staff who came to Christ because of a Summer Project in 1996, and had a live call with one of our STINT team Leaders in Madrid. (4 am for him). Then we had breakouts for all our partnerships for interested students. I am not good at numbers but the turn-out was the most I can remember in seven years with WSN.

Afterwards at 11 pm, we had a chance to be lead in a time of prayer by Dong Whan's wife Jung Sook Kim. In LA, Jung Sook started a Gethsemane Prayer movement where over 300 students gather each week to pray and fast. From these times the LORD has done amazing things in their ministry.

I was really wondering if any students would show up but the room where it was held was packed. She lead us in a two-hour time of prayer. Actually, I left at 1 am and there were still a crowd of students. Many of them said it was the highlight of their lives.

It was incredible. We use the phrase 'Korean style' praying to talk about praying all at once out loud but she said they don't call it that because they don't believe it is just a cultural thing. They call it desperate praying like the blind begger, the persistent widow or the sinner in the temple who beats his breast asking for mercy. We started by just all crying at to the LORD, "Jesus have mercy on me" three times and would pray desperately out-loud for a while and then she would lead us back to scripture and we would pray in the same way for what God was burdening us with. We prayed for ourselves, our campus, for students to be sent to the world, and on and on.

Our theme this week is "Free" and I am sure many students have benefited from talks from the word on being set free or times with staff and friends. But I truly believe many more where set free by crying out to the LORD in the late hours of last night.