Samford University’s Office of Spiritual Life has developed a Global Prayer Guide that helps prayer warriors and others lift up Samford family members who minister throughout the world.
While similar lists have invited prayers for students on summer mission trips, this roster includes the names of many Samford alumni who are in full-time mission service.
“The addition of alumni is new. We tried to be strategic about finding where our alumni are serving,” said Samford minister to students for global involvement Renee Pitts, who began a database by soliciting names via email and Facebook. So far, she has collected about 55 alumni names, and welcomes more.
The booklet includes information about Samford alumni who are serving all over the world. Some details are given freely, but some more discreetly, depending on the locale and situation. All entries include specific prayer requests, ranging from an appeal “for unity and peace amongst tribes and bordering countries,” by a missionary in East Africa, to a request “for healing and protection for all of the children with serious heart defects in our care,” from a worker in China.
Four Samford alumni requested prayers for their work in the South American countries of Bolivia, Peru and Costa Rica.
The guide cites 10 alumni in nations on the continent of Africa: Kenya, Madagascar, East Africa, North Africa, South Africa and West Africa, and Uganda.
In Asia, 22 Samford graduates are in full-time service in Central Asia, China, East Asia, Southeast Asia, India, Micronesia, Nepal and Thailand. Seven minister in Europe at posts in Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
A husband and wife in Australia are among several Samford couples who work as a team at a variety of locations in varied situations.
One unnamed Samford family in Asia had this request: “Please pray for believers in this area to be bold in sharing; they face real persecution if they do. Please pray for more people to obey His call and come to this area; there are so many people who haven’t heard.”
The prayer guide offers names of current Samford students, faculty and staff who are on short-term summer mission assignments throughout the world. North America and Central America countries are a temporary home this summer to 54 with Samford ties. The workers represent a plethora of ministries and projects.
Other students and employees, about 127 in all, are listed as being in South America and the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Two students are addressing spiritual needs on a multicultural level: Katelyn Brock in Ecuador and Ukraine, and Daysi Wilkinson, whose nine-month participation in the World Race will take her to the Philippines, Malawi and El Salvador.
At all three locations, Wilkinson will help however she is needed, whether teaching English in local schools, caring for orphans, digging wells for clean water, helping with construction or ministering through spreading God’s love.
“Working with the world race is a whole new level of brave for me,” said Wilkinson, a journalism and mass communication major who completed her sophomore year in May. “I will be taking on the challenge of seeing the world transformed through tangible expressions of God’s love.”
World Race, explains the south Florida resident, seeks to embrace the generation “whose heartbeat is to see a changed world” and who use their dissatisfaction with the status quo to take action.
“World racers are seeing lives changed in nations all over the world,” said Wilkinson, who plans to resume her Samford studies as a junior when she completes her gap year with World Race.
In the meantime, she, like all the others who are trying to change what they can for the better, covets prayers.
Copies of the Global Prayer Guide are available by contacting the Samford Office of Spiritual Life at (205) 726-2927. Anyone interested in being added to future lists is invited to contact Pitts at rlpitts@samford.edu.