Thursday marked the annual National Day of Prayer across the country, and for the 18^th consecutive year, residents from around Troup County gathered to pray for the future of the country. Community members met at the Biblical History Museum, while individuals from various corners of the community spoke and prayed on behalf of their industry.

Debbie Burdette and Linda McGill formed the Troup County National Day of Prayer Committee in 2002 when both were teaching at LaGrange High School and became aware of the national day.

“Linda and I met once a week and formed a prayer group,” Burdette said of the local group’s beginning. “It was about that time we first noticed there was a National Day of Prayer and said to each other that we would love to do something like that in the community. We know how powerful prayer is, so we got together and decided to throw it out to the community and see what happens.”

McGill helped develop the committee, intentionally asking women in the community to join as the two worked to get the event off the ground.

“Names came to me that the Lord would give me, and I started writing them down,” McGill said. “Once I had enough names, I started calling those people to see if they wanted to be on the committee to help us start a local National Day of Prayer.”

The event has traveled over the years, and has intentionally not been held in a church nor has it involved pastors directly, as the event is intended to reach across denominations.

“We ask for laypeople to lead the prayers,” Burdette said. “We don’t want to seem like we’re favoring or picking any one denomination with this.”

“This is an event that is supposed to be led by the community, by laypeople,” McGill echoed. “We want it to be open to everybody, not connected with any one church.”

Those who took part and were featured in the event this year were Betty Kelly, Nicole Kennedy, Erica Whitney, Baker Ellis, Rick Spencer and Jim Arrington, while the emcee for the event was Kevin Dunn.