How did thousands of people connect to pray for other's needs all over the world?
For years Catherine Marshall had received letters from people who read her books--people expressing frustration due to their circumstances; e.g., those in nursing homes, prisons, home-bound mothers of small children, the elderly, etc. They felt useless and of no real worth to themselves or to others.
In answer to Catherine's prayers for these people, God gave her a commission to organize and develop a ministry of intercession in prayer. This would give those experiencing frustration a real avenue to reach out and do something very special for those in need, while also alleviating their feelings of uselessness.
Catherine and her husband, Leonard LeSourd, sought out their many friends who were fellow authors, editors and believers in Jesus Christ to form a Board of Directors for the ministry of intercessory prayer, which they named and incorporated as Breakthrough.
Next they marshaled together a handful of volunteers from the neighboring communities of Purcellville and Lincoln, Virginia, to staff the ministry. Catherine’s secretary, Jean Brown, was given a procedure by God for processing the many prayer requests which were funneled into Catherine Marshall’s mail box from readers around the world. All records and data were kept on 3x5 inch cards and organized in boxes. All procedures were manual with no computerization for a period of about five years. Prayer sheets containing five or six prayer requests were sent to volunteer intercessors for daily prayer over a period of 21 days.
Before long, the staff decided that procedures would be more efficient and faster with the use of computers. They prayed for a computer analyst to be revealed to the ministry to lead the computerization process. God led the ministry to a brilliant young Christian man of many talents and abilities, named Larry Bohlayer.
He was a devout believer and single-handedly shouldered the responsibility to lead the ministry and its procedures into the 20th century.
Immediately, the staff and board began to pray in the monies necessary to develop and install the needed computer system to handle the growing ministry needs. Larry estimated the initial cost at $20,000. So that was the consensus of prayer that went forth to God in His Throneroom in heaven.
A few months later, an anonymous donor from the Pacific Northwest sent in exactly $20,000. Breakthrough was now on its way to streamlining the prayer/intercession process and becoming very efficient.
God also moved Catherine Marshall to begin sending Bibles to inmates in prisons throughout the world. Many of her readers were prisoners who asked her many questions about Christianity and expressed a desire to own and read Bibles. Sometimes prisoners would send a few coins or stamps to help defray the shipping costs.
I remember writing to publishers such as Zondervan, Kirkbride, Tyndale, requesting the “seconds” of Bibles which were flawed in some minor way (a missing or upside down page, etc.). They sent these seconds to us free of charge so long as we paid the freight costs.
Since the trucks were too large to get into the office driveway, the driver would park in a large area several hundred yards from Breakthrough and a couple of us would go to the drop off point to unload and bring the hundreds of Bibles to the office. One day a used hand truck myseriously appeared at the office. We asked the UPS delivery man if it was his but he said he had his and we should not question where it came from, so we didn’t pursue it any further. It helped immensely in moving the heavy boxes and crates. The Bibles were then sorted, packed and shipped to the various inmates requesting Bibles.
Sometimes when I went back to the Bible shipping room, the volunteers would be crying. They would show me a letter from an inmate on death row who was facing upcoming execution for his crimes. I would cry and then pray for the man. All Bibles and prayer requests were prayed over before being shipped out.
The Bibles to Prisoners part of the Breakthrough ministry continued for about nine years and then was transferred to a church in Florida that had an abundance of parishioners who wanted to carry it on. Hallelujah! God Jehovah Jirah will provide.
(To be continued)
Is something on your heart?
Six intercessors will pray for your request for 21 days.
