Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Images From All-Night Prayer

We have some of the sweetest times when we gather to keep an all-night vigil. Our last time, Oct 23, was no exception. I only took pictures at the beginning of the evening, so I didn't get everybody who came and went. I was so excited Nate was able to come for a few hours:)

Rowdy and Nate playing for us. Elizabeth, drawing...

Chad's painting station--he set it up in case any kids wanted to paint then ended up using it himself. That's one picture I should have gotten, his amazing finger painting. I had my stuff out too and painted, I'll have to download a picture some time...


Danita drawing

Janis, Lorna and Elijah (Alisa and Chad too)
Bear
Chad and Janis. We had a great "drum" circle sometime in the night. There was only one drum, Bear was on it at the time I think. The rest of us slapped legs and clapped hands. It was so fun how everyone just started beating out rhythms at the same time :)

Rowdy and Nate again
Those of us remaining early in the morning were laying around the floor, huddled under blankets. Janis, of course, started the morning by throwing a pillow at Bear. Before long the seven of us were lobbing pillows at each other laughing like crazy. While still laying on the floor. :D That was at 6:30, and somehow we still managed to be late for pre-service prayer at 8:30. Oops. :P
The next couple of days after an all-nighter are always challenging because of lack of sleep. That one night seems to affect the whole following week for me. At the same time there are often spiritual or physical breakthroughs that follow the fasting of time and sleep. While those are not why we do it, it's always fun to see.










4 comments:

Amanda said...

Wow, Sarah, how often do you do that? And is there a specific issue or purpose you're praying for at the time?

RavenM said...

Hi Amanda :) We currently do it once every two or three months. We'd like to do it monthly. Often we just want to set aside the time to worship and just give God the time. The first one we did was such a blast, the first half of the night there was a lot of dancing and singing and the second half there was a whole lot of foot- washing going on :)
Sometimes we'll have something specific we are praying for or at least starting with. Mostly though it's just to be with Jesus more :)

LindaFaye said...

Love it!!!

Way to go for making it through the night. I haven't done an all nighter in years, but I do enjoy our weekly prayer times. :)

RavenM said...

I too love my weekly prayer times. I'm part of two, Wednesday and Sunday morning.