Athens, Greece

"And here we go again
With all the things we said
And not a minute spent
To think that we'd regret
So we just take it back,
These words and hold our breath
Forget the things we swore we meant"
-Here We Go Again, Paramore

It's amazing what some people think of other people. In reading this you might assume that it's automatically a negatively directed thought, but actually not nearly: it's more directed to the positive.

Last night was the 4th consecutive Impact Surry prayer meeting. The largest, most obvious difference was the growth of participants. Every week there have been more involved than the previous. 8 on the 3rd, 14 the 10th, and 21 last night. We also had FOOD (BIG IMPORTANT THING)

Lets also look at the interesting thing: The way we 'get' prayer requests (for the most part) is through those boxes we put around town. The majority of requests received have actually come straight from the people at the meetings. Not that this is bad: I mean, we do have 20 people who are highly diverse, enough to encounter MANY needs and MANY people. I could list everyone and why they would know at least 500 people, of whom at least 50% have expressed open concerns and requests.

So we are back to the topic of what people think of other people.

During this prayer time, there couldn't have been a single negative word spoken against any of those requests. And somewhere near the end we grouped into 3 large sections. We prayed for the things that were close to us: people we personally know, etc. And suddenly Mrs. Bull just starts crying and says, "I'm sorry for crying, it's just that I love to pray, and I'm so happy that there are so many people here that want to pray. I need to pray; I live to pray.." and the rest was drowned by tears.
The age range of our group was large: at least half were under 25. There were people from at least 4 different churches.

After the prayer time dwindled, Jason presented some questions for the group, and from there sprang the most intellectual and heart-deep discussion. As Jay put it, "We became Athens tonight." What makes it so unique is the whole idea: 21 people, different backgrounds, ages and locations, and all together, openly discussing important issues. And we were all in a good mood :D