David Howard, the general director of World Evangelism Fellowship, was in the prayerful missions-minded revival at Wheaton College as a student. In this account, he tells of his best friend, missionary Jim Elliot’s 24-hour prayer chain.  (At the time of this blogpost, our church is in the middle of a similar 24 hour missions prayer chain)

I still have a small, faded World Evangelism Decision Card dated 1946, with my signature. Unfortunately, I did not record the day, but it is quite possible that I signed this card at the close of the first student missionary convention at the University of Toronto.

The card used to be green. I can tell by the small green circle where a thumbtack used to hold this card above my desk throughout the rest of my college days. It served as a daily reminder that I had committed myself to serve God overseas unless he were clearly too direct otherwise. The fact that I had 15 years of exciting service in Latin America is attributable in large measure to prayer – much of it stimulated by that little card.

Upon returning to college after the Toronto convention students began to meet regularly to pray for missions. My closest friend in college was Jim Elliot.  Jim was only to live for a few years beyond college, but in that short life he would leave a mark for eternity on my life and the lives of hundreds of others. Exactly 10 years to the week when the Toronto convention ended, Jim and his four companions were speared to death by the Huaorani Indians on the Curaray River in Ecuador. In his death he would speak to multiplied thousands, although we did not know that in our college days. Jim encouraged a small group of us to meet every day at 6:30 AM to pray for ourselves and our fellow students on behalf of missions. This became a regular part of my college life.

Jim Elliot also organized around the clock cycle, asking students to sign up for a 15 minute slot each day when he or she would promise to pray for missions and for mission recruitment on our campus. The entire 24 hours were filled in this way. Thus, every 15 minutes throughout the day and night at least one student was on his knees interceding for missions at Wheaton College.

Art Waynes was a war veteran who had served in Italy and planned to return as a missionary. He decided to pray systematically throughout the college directory, praying for 10 students by name every day. Art followed this faithfully throughout his college years period new paragraph I did not see art again until we met in 1974 at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Switzerland.  As we renewed fellowship and reminisced about old times, he said, “Dave, do you remember those prayer meetings we used to have at Wheaton?”

“I certainly do,” I replied.

Then art said, “you know, Dave, I am still praying for 500 of our college contemporaries who are now on the mission field.”  “How Do you know that many are overseas?” I asked.  “I kept in touch with the alumni office and found out who was going as a missionary, and I still pray for them.”

Astounded, I asked art if I could see this prayer list. The next day he brought it to me, a battered old notebook he had started in college days with the names of hundreds of our classmates and fellow students.

Taken From: David Howard, “The Road to Urbana and Beyond,”  Evangelical Missions Quarterly 21 no. 1 (January 1985)