During November last year Former Port Elizabeth Bishop Eric Pike walked 200km through Nelson Mandela Bay to launch the Nehemiah Prayer Walk which touches all 60 voting wards of the metro.
This month, with walking strictly off-limits “during this testing time of the Covid-19 pandemic”, he has been led to invite citizens to join him on a “virtual prayer walk” along the prayer walk route.
“As we ‘walk’ we will ask God to protect our metro and all its people from the Covid-19 virus and the economic and social destruction that the response to it is causing,” he says.
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An invitation signed by Bishop Pike and his wife, Joyce, and other leaders of the prayer walk initiative, explains how the virtual prayer walk works as follows: “Using the prayer as a guide (which can be downloaded here) you pray every day for every person in those wards in that section of the walk. The journey starts in Summerstrand (Ward 1) and winds its way for 200 km through the metro and back again to St Margaret’s in Summerstrand.
“As you follow the route, pause to pray for the people who stay in the wards which are the focus of the day. Try to understand the conditions under which they are living. For most of the people in the metro this means living in filth and with the spectre of hunger hanging over their households on a daily basis. Covid-19 has made their situation even worse and more hopeless. The three related evils of unemployment, inequality and poverty will be with us after the Covid-19 threat has been contained.
“With a largely dysfunctional municipality at a political level it is up to the Church to raise the plight of the poor and marginalised. We must pray for the leadership the metro needs to create the sustainable jobs that are needed.”
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More information about the prayer walk is available at http://tcn.org.za/nehemiah-vision-2/introduction-to-the-nehemiah-prayer-route/
