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Hey, ladies of faith. I'm Jenny Peckl. I am the host of our new podcast.

It's a podcast we hope will make the community of women at faith feel smaller and more connected. We'll be releasing them periodically over the next several months. So if you don't want to miss even one episode, hit that subscribe button, and I hope you'll join me.

Thanks for listening. This morning, I have the privilege of sitting down with Margaret Johnston and Lou Anna Patterson, and we're going to get to know them a little bit better today and kind of what is one of their heartbeats, something that they love and that they've shared through the years. And there's many things they've shared through the years, so we're going to hear about that.

But even as I was preparing for this podcast, I was thinking about the things going on in the world and how hard and heavy things can be. And as a woman, we often are thinking, or at different times in our lives, different seasons, like, wow, I just wish I was doing something purposeful or fruitful or how can I be using my life? And that can be hard when you're a young mom, or maybe you're an older person and you feel like you just can't get out, and you're just feeling like, I'm not being very fruitful or purposeful. And global prayer had come to my mind.

Many years ago, a young missionary shared with me, she said, you know, I really want to learn how to pray, and I want to practice praying, because when I'm old and I can't do anything else, I can sit there and pray. And I thought, that has stuck with me through the years. I thought, well, there's many times in life and in our seasons where, you know, I had back surgery, I couldn't do anything, I could just sit there or watch TV, but I can pray, right? There's many places and times where we can just pray.

But prayer is something on your hearts, and we wanted to talk about that today. So I'm just going to ask you guys to introduce yourself a little bit about who you are, how you came to faith, when you were, you know, your family, that kind of thing. And then we'll weave in how global prayer became a part of your life and a part of your passion and heart.

So who wants to start, Luanna or Margaret? Margaret? Okay, Margaret. Margaret Johnston. So faith, some of you know, faith is a big enough place that sometimes you cross paths with other people and sometimes not with others.

And that's why we love this podcast, because it helps us get to know people that way and maybe identify who they are and some of their hearts, passions, struggles, things like that, so we can connect with one another. But Margaret and I, Margaret was one of the first people I did women's ministry with actually at faith many years ago. I don't know, maybe 25 years ago, maybe a little.

And let's see, Maddie was just a baby. Maddie was a baby, yes, well, she was nine months old when we came to faith, yeah. And so Margaret is always kind and interacting with us and inviting us over and because Tim was in residency and Margaret's husband is a physician also, so she knew the struggles of having a husband in residency.

And she was very, always checking in with me and that was very sweet and I loved that. And one thing we did together was Mug and Muffin, was on a Wednesday morning Bible study that started many years ago and I loved that. So Margaret, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit? I came to faith when I was first married.

I actually grew up in New Jersey, but my husband was a Hoosier and he had actually been at faith a year, the year before we were married, but he wanted to visit some different places. He didn't want to just have us come here. So we visited some places, but we came here, it seemed like a really good place, a good home for us.

Faith was started in 1964 and we were married in 1967, so it was just three years old. It was very, so we were here near the very beginning. At faith's first location, right? At faith's, well, not the very first.

It was actually on Carrollton. It had met somewhere else before then, but at any rate, my husband had been interested in missions. I knew that.

In fact, back in, when we were in college, we actually broke up and I think a part of that was my needing to deal with God about what I was willing to do in life. Maybe I wasn't ready for that. I think that God used that time when we were broken, we were apart, that I just really gave my life to him to let him do whatever.

It was probably the most growing time in my life, but then we did actually get back together at the end of our senior year. When we came to faith, it had a strong missions emphasis. It's an interesting story, but when I was in high school, I had a history teacher who was always wanting to teach us the leaders of all these countries in the world.

I had very little interest in learning who was the leader of a blank country that I didn't even know myself. It really stuck with me because I knew I should know that. When we came here and I started to get to know these missionaries, people who lived in these places, I was like, wow, this is amazing.

We would often have Sunday evening services where these people would share. I can remember one night coming to a Sunday evening service and always leaving that was about missions. I was leaving with like, wow, this is so rich.

I am learning so much. Then when something would happen in the world, wow, I know somebody who's there who's eating yak butter. All of a sudden, the world news is more personal.

I was just telling Luanna as we walked in here today how we met with our strategic partner in prayer on last Sunday, Palm Sunday. The leader of the ABTS seminary was on that call even though it was later in the evening for them, but he cared enough about Faith Church and about letting and being in our prayer time. While we were talking, there was some planes flying over that were breaking the sound barrier.

They had to go open windows to make sure they didn't break their windows. Just being able to know people who are in these places and to care about them. Just yesterday, I heard that some of our people here who have kids who are being called up into the reserves.

Now it's like, oh no, so and so, now this is becoming personal. The world has, I think, become a much more personal place for me by being in faith. Yeah.

Great. How about you, Luanna? Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit and how you got involved and what you're doing? Sure. We moved to the north side of Indianapolis back in the late 90s.

Ben and I were looking for a new church. Our kids were just three and six years old. We narrowed it down to two churches and we decided to spend six weeks at each one.

We came to Faith Church first. It was right in the middle of a missions conference. It was so fun to see my kids in the middle of this big market trying foods from various parts of the world.

Then I actually had an opportunity to hear some of the women share during that missions conference. We loved the emphasis on missions. After visiting here for six weeks, we went to the other church one Sunday.

Our kids were both crying when we picked them up after Sunday school and they said, we want to go back to Faith Church. We did. We came back and we never left because it felt like home to us right away.

Yeah. Missions is what drew us to Faith Church, actually. We came once and we just kept coming because they're our heart for missions.

We'd visited other churches where maybe they sent the youth group to a little trip here and a little trip there. Once you came to Faith, you realized we're all in, all the adults, all the kids. It's a heartbeat of this church.

That's what drew us here too. You both have been here a long time. How long have you been here? Since the late 90s, Lou Anna? 1997.

Yeah. Okay. It's about when we came, actually.

1997. Yeah. What are some ways both of you have been involved at Faith through the years? I know both of you have done different ministries and you've done some stuff together.

Maybe you can share a little bit about that. My major role here at Faith for many years was leading the children's ministry. I was in charge of that market.

That you came to. I was an elementary school teacher. That was my training and background.

I really, really enjoy children. But I also had lots of other heartbeats in that. I think I've always loved the word of God and that's what I served with you in women's Bible study.

But I suppose that those things, I think things involving teaching have always been a part of what I've enjoyed doing. So that was, I would say, my main ministry here at Faith. Okay.

How about you, Lou Anna? Well, I joined the choir and that was probably my first real family here at Faith Church. I love the choir to this day and there have been a few times I've had to sit out a bit, but mostly I've been in the choir and I taught kindergartners for a brief time. That was really interesting.

I don't consider myself a teacher of young children, but it was really a valuable time for me too. I've been involved in women's Bible study in the past and I think the biggest thing for me though has becoming involved in missionary care and global prayer. Yeah.

That's been a big thing. Yeah. And we'll talk about that a little bit more, but both of you think back to when you first came to Faith Church and life was very different back then, a different season for both of you.

How did you get involved? How or why did you make time in global prayer? Back then it was women's missionary fellowship. Now we call it global prayer. But what you both had a heart for missions, but life is busy when you've got little kids and your husbands are working and there's life.

Life was crazy back then, right? We think it's crazy. No, it was crazy back then too. So how, how did you get involved with it? Did someone invite you? Did you just go and how did you get pulled in? That's a good question because I really didn't spend a lot of time in women's missionary fellowship or now global prayer early on.

When I came to Faith Church and there weren't a lot of programs even in education, they were doing, but it wasn't, it was a young church. And I come in with being a teacher, you know, bingo. Before the first year was out, the Sunday school superintendent of the day called me and asked me to get involved with teaching.

So you know, we didn't have any children then, but that was a big responsibility. Let me start a children's church program, which I did with an older lady in the church and another friend of mine actually from college, Thelma Van Sickle, who was Sue Shepley's mother. I didn't have any children, but then later on when I did have children, you know, I was busy.

I was a busy mom. I didn't, I couldn't make time to do that. I didn't.

I did go, however, during the missions conferences when they would have the missionary women's missionary fellowship, I would try to get to that. And I knew other ladies who did it. So I knew about it and I was, it's not that I never attended, but very rarely.

And even in, I don't know when I started to make it a major priority, but it was well after I had retired from being the children's director after 25, 30 years, you know, that I was, I, you know, had more margin in my life to do that. So I knew about it, but was involved in other things in missions, but not global prayer. Okay.

How about you, Luana? Well, I think I first attended global prayer during the missions conferences too, and would hear from all the women who were visiting. Once my children were in school, I think I came intermittently, but I stood in awe of the women who were so faithful to be there. They were, I always thought of this church as a praying church.

And these were the women I considered to be prayer warriors. And they were essentially mentoring me and I, I didn't grow up in a Christian family. My husband didn't either.

So we would seek out older men and women of this church for counsel. And these were all the women that I wanted to counsel me who were part of global prayer. So it was just a joy to follow in their footsteps.

Once I realized the example that they were setting and how important it was to make prayer a priority. Can you think of some specific answers to prayer through the years that God, that you remember like, wow, I remember when God did this, we prayed for this and it happened and maybe it was many weeks or months or years of prayer, or maybe it was very quickly. Is there anything that comes to mind? Can you share a story about how you saw, how you've seen God active in the world through your prayers? One thing, especially like in global prayer, we pray for all the things in their letters.

And you know, there are many people praying for those. We, we, it's not that we know that our prayers gave X answer or Y answer, but we can see in future letters, you know, that many of these prayers are answered. And those, those are the many of the unknowns of prayer.

You know, we don't know. We don't know about how our prayers are answered always. I remember once upon a time, I won't name the missionary, but there was lost luggage involved.

And we prayed for this lost suitcase for a long time. And it did show up and it was in India, pretty sure. So but you know, I, I think too, we, we've prayed for the children.

We try to read between the lines of the prayer letters. So we pray for the kids, even the unborn children. When we learn that a woman is pregnant, we pray for their spouses, their choices.

And until we're in heaven, I don't think we'll know the full impact of the, of those prayers. So it will be a real joy to, to hear those. It's kind of a delayed, yeah, prayer is kind of a delayed gratification or I don't know what you would call it, but I was looking up what you just said reminded me of this quote I was reading this morning, actually by Oswald Chambers.

It says, when you labor at prayer from God's perspective, there are always results. What an astonishment it will be to see once the veil is finally lifted, all the souls that have been reaped by you simply because you have been in the habit of taking orders from Jesus Christ. And then his famous quote is prayer does not equip us for the greatest work, but prayer is the greater work.

And sometimes we forget that. And sometimes we, sometimes we feel the gravity of that, right? And other times we don't, but I think in global prayer, maybe you can explain to me a little bit about like, when I come into a meeting, what happens there? Tell me about the prayer letters. Tell me about the women.

I know there's different times where in the women actually come and join you. So how do you decide how, how you read the letters and who joins you when and, and what happens through all that? I can remember back in the early days, you know, when I, I did go to global prayer and at least, I don't remember when I went, it's been 58 years, but anyway, we would, we would get mostly aerograms, you know, that, you know, took sometimes two weeks to get to you. And you know, the women would come with their, their letters, you know, physical letters in hand, you know, these aerograms, they would, then they would underline, you know, the things that you would share the letters, you would underline the things that you wanted to have prayed for.

And then you would share the letters, and then they would pray for every detail that was there. But a lot of times, you know, by the time you got the letter, the news was old, and you were in the events had already happened, and you didn't have information as so much. But so it was really, you know, the pattern hasn't really changed that much.

In, in, in a certain sense, you get the letters, you get all the letters and you that you have, and the numbers of letters that they had were not nearly as significant as the amount of information that we have today. So that was a kind of a history. So back then, people would receive their letters at home and kind of prepare or do their homework and underline or highlight when you came to the prayer meeting, specific things to pray for? I think so.

So I'm not sure how much I don't know if the missionaries would send something directly to the church. I'm not really aware of that. But it was mostly letters that people had gotten.

And no, I do remember that the church secretary used to turn all the letters over to, to Lou Ann Mitchell when she was leading. So then she would get here at an older age. Yeah, right.

If she if she had some, then she would see what the church had. And then she would just bring them to the meeting. But the pandemic changed everything because we didn't meet for a time.

And then we realized we needed to be meeting. And we all became pretty proficient at Zoom. And we enlisted the help of all of our members.

And we had to do a little training to get everybody on Zoom. But we began to Zoom our prayer time. So we meet second and fourth Tuesdays of every month from 930 to 11.

And the weekend before our meeting, Margaret faithfully emails to the ladies of the group every letter that we have that we're going to cover on Tuesday. Then whoever is leading that meeting will just send out a reminder email that weekend and then ask the ladies for those who are comfortable presenting a letter to just respond by a certain time on Monday. And then the leader assigns the letters to the women of the group who will be attending.

And there's sometimes the option, always the option to come and be here in the Zoom room. But everyone is free to get on at home in their pajamas if they want to. Okay, so you're still Zooming now even.

So if somebody wants to just Zoom in and hear some of the prayer requests, they can do that. They certainly can. And Lou Anne Mitchell still joins us sometimes from her new home.

Yeah, and that's been a real blessing to have her with us. So Jan Kummer still attends, and she doesn't have internet, so she always comes in person. So there will typically be a few of us here in the Zoom room, and then others are on Zoom.

And we sometimes have only eight letters. We have roughly 40 missionaries of this church, and we don't hear from all of them every month. Some of them we even hear from more often, though.

So sometimes we might have eight letters. Sometimes we might have 22. So we sometimes have more time to focus on the stories in the letters, and then other times we just need to get down to business and address the prayer requests.

So during your meetings, you surely can't go around and share all the prayer requests. Do you pass the letters around, and people take turns praying for what's underlined and that kind of thing? Well, each person has been assigned one or a few letters, those who are comfortable doing so. And we share perhaps four to six letters at a time, and then we stop and pray for those four to six letters, and then go on to the next group.

If there's a missionary woman in town, we invite them to come and join us so they can give a personal report. And we often start with breakfast a half hour early on those days just for a time of fellowship together, and then they share first. A couple of times we've opted to have lunch instead and have the missionary share it toward the end of the time.

And that's a really meaningful time for the women. They love to join us, and it's just precious to hear the questions that the ladies of the group will ask, and it's so evident how much they care. One thing I'd like to comment on in terms of that change with the pandemic is that instead of bringing the letters and at that time having to go through and try to underline the stuff when you're trying to pray, it's just the Zoom has been so much more efficient because people get—they come through the CCB, the church email system.

So if you want to be a part of Global Prayer, you can join that on the CCB, and you can get all the letters that way. Because when I send them out, I send them out to anybody that's a part of Global Prayer. So there might be 40 people that are part of Global Prayer, probably not that many, maybe 30, but they may not participate that day.

But it has raised the number of people that are in attendance from four or five sometimes to at least seven to ten each week because there's, you know, the access is better. Lou Anne Mitchell led Global Prayer for 40 years, and when she retired, it's taken three of us to— To where one woman has— Well, because, you know, I send out all the letters and make sure they're all collected. And then Lou Anna and Carolyn Jones lead the meeting.

They take turns leading it. So they're involved, both of them. So it is a lot more efficient because everybody has prepared their letter ahead of time.

And that's been a blessing. And we've tried to include these strategic partners as well. Can one of you tell me the story about Peg Schrum when she realized what Global Prayer really was doing, how significant it was? She first came to the church with Jeff, I think it was about 30 years ago.

And they were going to be staying in the missions house. And she came into the church to get the key, and someone realized who she was and ushered her off to this meeting of women. And they just received her warmly, she said, and she thoroughly enjoyed her time.

But she watched the group take the letters and begin underlining. And she was so struck with how serious this group was about praying that she says now she structures her letters with Global Prayer ladies in mind, with bolded parts and bullet points so that we know just how to focus in and what to pray for. That's awesome.

I love that. You know, I think that when you asked earlier about a significant impact of Global Prayer, the stories that I think we wrote, all of us wrote down, where the fact, the significance of it is, is incredible, because these women know that the people are missionary ladies, they know that we have been praying for them. They know that we have prayed for their everything that's in their letter, you know, by and large.

And they, when they come there, when they come home, or when they come here, they feel like they're known, that somebody knows them, that knows what they're about. And when they come to that meeting, they know that these ladies have been praying for them. And it is a safe place for them, that they can really bear their heart.

I think that, you know, it's just a really invaluable. I think, I remember one of the early times I went to a meeting, and there was a young missionary. She had been single, but she got married, and she went to the field, and she was very dutifully coming home and, you know, doing what missionaries are supposed to do, and sharing their ministry and everything.

And then, during that time, somebody asks, you know, questions, and suddenly, you know, the mask was down, and she started to cry. And I think about, you know, it was embarrassing to her, and it was, but the rest of the time she was here, the way the women rallied around her, they cared for her, I know that their connection to this church remains strong to this day, because she was able to be ministered to where she really is really at. And I think that a lot of what happens is a way that we help to keep our missionaries healthy, emotionally and spiritually, by caring for them.

That is an incredible thing that happens there. You know, dear Ruth Angiak, who just passed away, when she would take the missionaries out for lunch, she loved all the missionaries. She would take them out shopping, you know, all the things that became a part of caring.

These people felt that this was a place that they could come and be themselves. One of our missionaries who has a very, a senior missionary has a difficult family situation. She came to global prayer and shared, and we were praying, you know, for her, and she utterly fell apart.

Just emotionally, she just had more than she can bear. And, you know, there's something about having people gather around you and pray for you that gives you hope when your situation is really tough. And I would say that the ministry to this, of global prayer, is more about that.

The significance of it is more about that, than anything else. Also, are there any specific scriptures that you tend to go towards, or that really encourages you to persevere in prayer, or keep going, or keep caring for the missionaries? I was thinking this morning about, you know, current events, you know, and I just was thinking about the Great Commission, when Jesus said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. You know, what, you know, there's no king's rallies, there's other leaders rising up, there's this and that, but, you know, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Therefore, go therefore there, make disciples of all nations, you know, because we know that He is the ultimate authority over all things, that we can go and make disciples and teach, and He's going to be with us to the end of the age. Another one that always touches me is Romans 10, 13, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, but how will they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard, and how can they hear without someone preaching, and how can they preach unless they are sent? I think that part of, you know, that this is involved in is the sending, you know, we're sending them, we need to pray for them. In 2 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul told the Corinthians that they helped him in ministry when they prayed, that blessings came through the prayers of many.

So it's really exciting to think that we

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