“Where’s Dot Wing?” I asked Mandy Parsons in the pool Friday morning.

“Oh, her church is hosting World Day of Prayer this afternoon. She’s really busy.”

Where’d I hear about World Day of Prayer? From Linda French, who was to represent the Rumford Center Church as a reader for the service.

Maybe the service would fill the bill for this week’s Valley Voices. I’d miss one of my favorite radio programs, “Down Memory Lane,” but that’s no big deal.

Far from it. Attending the 2 p.m. service in Virgin Chapel last Friday left us all feeling we’d been borne aloft. “This was the best ever,” said the woman sitting next to me. (Her church is St. Athanasius-St. John). How many years has she been attending the WDP service?

“Many years. Many,” she said.

World Day of Prayer has its roots in the mid-19th century when, despite opposition from all-male boards, women in Canada and the United States entered mission work. In the 1880s, Presbyterian women initiated the prayer day movement; Methodist women, close on their heels; Anglicans, too. By 1897, women from six denominations had come together in a committee for a united day of prayer for missions.

On went the movement: In 1912, the women’s ecumenical mission movement celebrated its jubilee. Women didn’t get the vote, remember, until 1920. But with the women’s suffrage movement itself, the WCTU, village improvement societies, discussion groups like our own Searchlight Club (1904), not to mention their management of businesses and farms, women wielded a lot of power and influence while they waited.

The first national Day of Prayer was in Canada on Jan. 9, 1920; the first in the United States was held on Feb. 20 of the same year. In 1926, women of North America distributed the worship service to missions around the world. We have learned the great lesson of praying with, not for, our sisters of other races and nations.

Jean Hersey thinks World Day of Prayer services here began in 1935. It’s heady to think of the millions of women who gathered all over the planet last Friday to conduct the same service, sing the same hymns, read the same Scripture. In the small Virgin Chapel – our WDP rotates through 10 area churches – at least 75 of us gathered for the service prepared by women in South Africa and dedicated to the relief of poverty and HIV/AIDS there and around the world.

I got to Linnell Street early – or so I thought – for the 2 p.m. service: had to park a few blocks away. Carolyn Kennard greeted me at the door; there were Dave and Ann Kimball and lots of other familiar faces. At first I sat in the back, but wanting a better view and more light, I moved to the empty second pew on the left.

Patty Jones thought the service had “more life this year,” it was spirited! Green Church minister Ginger Cunningham, who conducted the combined church choir of 20, rehearsed us all in an African hymn – oh Ginger’s splendid voice! Key coordinator Jean Hersey was at the piano.

Grand, thrilling as it is to be a part of a worldwide event, we need to acknowledge that World Day of Prayer meaningfully benefits our own community. One of several ecumenical programs – Mark Belanger’s annual Christmas program is another – World Day of Prayer brings together people from every corner of our community.

“It gives women from all the churches a chance to bond,” Hersey said. “You’ll see someone on the street and think, Oh I know her; she’s part of World Day of Prayer.'”

Linda Farr Macgregor lives with her husband, Jim, in Rumford. She is a freelance writer and author of “Rumford Stories.” Contact her at [email protected].