UNI students participate in 24/7 Prayer Week and 24/7 Service Week

University of Northern Iowa students continue to participate in 24/7 Prayer Week, which kicked off Thursday night at Brothers and Sisters in Christ (BASIC) and was followed by a kickoff celebration at the Lutheran Student Center.

"(The) 24/7 Prayer Week is a week where Christians from different denominations and different campus ministries can come together and humble themselves before God to seek His guidance and His will for us as individuals and us as a body of Christ on our campus," said Ben Mosbach, a senior leisure youth and human services major. Mosbach is an active member of the BASIC community and helped to put on this event.

From April 14 through April 21, there will be a student praying every hour in a prayer room at the Lutheran Student Center. More than 100 students have signed up to take part in the event.

"It's a great way to unite the body of Christ on campus as well as deepen your own relationship with God. It's so easy to get caught up in the business of life and not take time to slow down," said Brittany Sprague, a junior English education major. "This encourages students to take an hour from life and spend it talking to God."

Students from many different denominations and religious backgrounds are participating in this event.

"I am participating in prayer week because of how impacting it was for me last year," said Jordin Cowan, a junior social work major. "I was in a place last year where I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing with my life. I knew that reading my Bible, praying and journaling were things that I needed to do to stay in communication with God, but it felt like such a chore. I went in (the prayer room) feeling at automatic peace. I dove in really deep and had little gut urges to read a certain place in the Word and meditate on them, all the while being changed completely in my heart and mind by the Holy Spirit. God's ‘voice' was more apparent and real to me than it ever had been before."

Along with the constant praying every hour, there will be prayer walk on Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Prayer Week will wrap up on Thursday with a Maundy Thursday Service, which will be a celebration of Jesus' journey to the cross. Maundy Thursday services are held on the Thursday before Easter in remembrance of the Last Supper.

In response to 24/7 Prayer Week, UNI Freethinkers and Inquirers is putting on 24/7 Service Week, which involves a different volunteer service project each day. Some of the events include a trip to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank, doing cleanups on campus and working with College Hill to do beautification projects.

"We kicked off (Thursday) by going to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank, which was both very rewarding and very fun. Their staff is great, and knowing that we've contributed even a little bit to their mission is a great feeling," said Cory Derringer, a senior psychology and sociology major. As of this month, Derringer is the new president of UNIFI.

More than 30 people have signed up to help out with Service Week. This includes members of UNIFI as well as nonmembers.

"I'm really looking forward to see who all gets involved. It's a really diverse group of people helping us out. I think a lot of people can get behind the idea that while a group of people want to pray for a week, we actually want to help out around the community," said Trevor Boeckmann, a senior economics major and former president of UNIFI. "Our numbers have been staggering so far. If everyone who signed up actually comes out to help out, I really do think we can make a difference."

Boeckmann, as well as other UNIFI members, have a different viewpoint on prayer and believe that the Cedar Falls community would be better off with acts of service.

"We think that (prayer) is a lot of waste of time and manpower. There's an old saying that ‘two hands doing service will do more than 1,000 clasped in prayer' and we really hold to that. We think that the idea of praying might be fine, but really it accomplishes nothing. We want to prove that people coming to actually help out with the community and to help out with people less fortunate is a better use of time," said Boeckmann.

For the Prayer Week participants, it's more than just prayer. As Ben Mosbach would say, it's also about putting faith into action – combining prayer and service together.

"As a Christian, I believe in the power of prayer and I believe in the power of God to work through prayer. I believe that as his children, we have a responsibility to do both. We have a call to service and a call to action in a response to our faith. But we also have a call and responsibility to seek God's wisdom and seek God's presence in prayer," said Mosbach.

Participation in either of these events does not boil down to whether or not you believe in prayer, but it can correlate to your personal convictions. For some, their belief is based on scientific fact.

"Most recently there was a prayer study done of patients in hospitals and they found that people who didn't know that they were being prayed for didn't do any better than those who weren't prayed for and people who knew that they were being prayed for actually did worse than people who didn't know they were prayed for at all, because they had the pressure of knowing that people were praying for them and they had to get better for God. There's never been any evidence that prayer has worked, so it's pointless," said Boeckmann.

For others, their belief is based on faith and personal experiences.

"I saw the amazing things and heard testimonies during last year's Prayer Week and God really does amazing things when people come together in prayer. I can say personally that I have seen prayer work and God speaks to those who talk to him," said Sprague.

Neither of the groups want their events to turn into a competition between each other.