I have asked Fr Francis Onyango IMC
to share with us this amazing initiative that began in 2020
and has now reached 44 countries
Introduction
We have just concluded our annual 31 day prayer journey famously known us the War Room. This year we were guided by the theme: ‘Jesus Remember Me!’ taken from the words of the thief on the cross who begged the crucified Christ to remember him. How did we reach here?
The beginning of War Room
War Room is a result of the Covid 19 pandemic. While serving at Sts Peter and Paul Parish in Kwaluseni – Manzini Diocese in Eswatini, we always had a 9 day healing novena in the month of September. When Covid happened, churches were closed and we couldn’t have our novena that year. At that time we were losing many of our people to Covid 19; there was fear and desperation everywhere, people felt alone and powerless and with churches closed hope kept diminishing. I kept wondering how best one could respond to the situation.
My priestly anniversary was soon coming in August; August 30 was going to be my 5th priestly anniversary. It was at this moment that I got an inspiration to dedicate my anniversary to pray for those who were desperately in need of God’s intervention. As a result, I decided to dedicate not just the 30th of August which is the day of my ordination, but the whole month of August since at that moment in time people needed companionship to help them face the reality that was hitting us so hard from every angle, a reality we didn’t know how to deal with.
Why the name War Room?
The name was inspired by a movie I had watched back while in the seminary entitled ‘War Room’. This movie highlights the power of prayer and how impossible battles can be won on bended knees. I thought this would give a perfect image of our situation; we were in a battle, a war with a virus we didn’t know how to control; there was need to rally people to get down on their knees to prayer – for hope, for healing and consolation but also for victory. We couldn’t come together physically, but we could create our war rooms in our homes and fight this battle together in prayer. I decided to form a WhatsApp group, gave word out especially to parishioners and a few friends and the very first War Room in 2020 brought together 110 participants. From that moment War Room kept growing silently but aggressively.
War Room 2 brought together 256 members as that was the capacity allowed by whatsapp in a group at the time, other people were locked out. War Room 3 had 512 members as whatsapp had doubled group capacity to 512, many others were locked out. In War Room 4 we had to open two groups each with a capacity of 512 and still a number of people were locked out. As numbers grew, membership also spread to different countries. By War Room 4 we were already spread across 18 countries. War Room 5 had two groups each with 1024 members, once again whatsapp had increased group capacity, it remains so to date. War Room 6 had three groups bringing together people from 28 countries. War Room 7 has been exceptional, we had 4 groups of 1024 members (about 4100 people) each full to capacity and still others were locked out. War Room 7 brought together members spread across 44 countries of the world.
Fr Francis Onyango IMC
To be continued...
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