Local moms join together to form weekly prayer group

Three Sidney moms have created a Moms in Prayer group that takes place every Thursday between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. at the Evangelical Free Church in Sidney.

Martina Drewes, mother of six, Mindy Peters, mother of four, and Jennifer Ernst, mother of two, started the Sidney group back in August of 2012, and they are now welcoming any person interested in joining the prayer group to come to the meetings.

“Jennifer and I both moved here in June and we both had been in prayer groups before,” said Drewes. “I met Mindy, who has been here for two years, and she had been in a prayer group where she came from too. Jennifer and I both asked Mindy separately within the same week if there was one here and we all decided we should just start one in Sidney so we started getting together every week.”

The mission of Moms in Prayer International is to “impact children and schools worldwide for Christ by gathering mothers to pray,” said program officials.

“Our vision is that every school in the world would be covered with prayer,” they said.

The global organization provides weekly prayer sheets that all of its participants can print off and use during their prayer meetings.

“We get the prayer sheet offline but then we add prayers specific to Sidney,” said Drewes. “At the beginning we read some scripture off of the sheet and then we praise the lord for who he is, confess any sins and thank him for answers to prayers,” said Drewes. “We see answer to prayers as very cool.”

The group said that they pray for schools, as well as the community and that they also accept any other personal prayers.

“Pastors, neighbors and people from the community contact us or we pray about different things we are aware of,” said Drewes. “Like when there was a boy in school that was injured over the break we prayed for him. We pray for events as we hear about them and we’ve told people if they ever having anything that needs prayed for to let us know. When they do we put it on the list for the week.”

“It can be anonymous, or if they want to be specific they can,” said Peters.

“One time a person said, ‘There is an abuse situation and that is all I can say, but please pray about it.’ So that’s all we knew but we prayed about it anyway,” said Drewes. “Obviously those things are sensitive situations and God knows the details so if we pray about it, he knows.”

The group said that they welcome any person interested in praying for the community and kids.

“We would love anybody to just show up,” said Drewes. “We won’t turn away anybody. It’s called Moms In Prayer but anybody can come join us.”

“Even if they can’t come on Thursdays they can always contact Mindy with a prayer request,” said the mother. “If anybody ever has something that they would like us to pray about for them they can contact us. It can be as anonymous as it needs to be.”

To contact Peters to enter a prayer request, ask about the group, or request that a sitter is present so that their children can come with them to the group prayer call 254-4035.

“We hold the group on school day mornings because we figure it is a good time for people,” said Drewes.

The three mothers said that the prayer group is important for the community.

“I think because our country was founded on amazing principles that we need to get back to those principles and if we can bring any concerns, great or small, before God and we see answers to those prayers it is just going to improve the community as a whole,” said Drewes.

“Prayer is the most powerful thing that we have,” said Peters.

“I like seeing the impact that it has on the community. I’m volunteering in the schools so I see where the prayer is needed and am able to relate,” said Ernst.

“It’s always neat to see the answers to the prayers too,” said Drewes. “They might not all be answered in a certain time frame but it’s just neat when you do get to see the answers.”