YMCA prayer breakfast hears message of hope through praying

For its annual community prayer breakfast on Thursday, the YMCA of Greater Charlotte picked the theme of prayer and its power – particularly during the darkest moments.

They couldn’t have picked two better people to discuss that topic than Nancy Writebol and Harry Jones. Prayer sustained them during their high-profile brushes with death.

Writebol was a missionary from Charlotte on assignment in Liberia last July when she started running a fever and tested positive for the often-fatal Ebola virus.

Through prayer, in those first few days of the unknown, she found a peace.

“We had been working in isolation for over a month, helping other patients who had Ebola,” she told an audience of about 2,200, the largest prayer breakfast in 28 years. “So I knew what the disease looked like. I knew what the consequences of it were. But God gave me a great peace.”

In late 2011, Jones had been Mecklenburg County’s manager for 11 years when he developed gastrointestinal pains and was told he had an advanced, incurable form of pancreatic cancer.

“I was afraid that this disease was going to conquer me,” Jones told the assembled. “I have never in my life felt that way – I’ve been a fighter all my life.”

Then on Christmas Eve 2011, he went for a walk with his dog – listening to Aretha Franklin sing carols – and he began to pray simple prayers he’d learned as a boy in Southern Pines.

Before his diagnosis, he’d described himself as a “faith-liar.” During that walk he began a “spiritual rebirth” that continues 40 months after doctors said he only had months to live and “what started out as the worst day of my life ended up as the best.”

‘Prayer prepared me’

The prayer breakfast, until three years ago conducted on the National Day of Prayer, which is next Thursday, continues to grow. About 2,200 seats were set in the Crown Ballroom at uptown’s NASCAR Hall of Fame and only a few seats were empty.

The event began 28 years ago in a church, started by a small group of men: Charlotte evangelist Leighton Ford, brother-in-law of Billy Graham; former Y CEO Harry Brace; Tom Dooley; Willie Stratford Sr. Fewer than 100 people attended that first breakfast, said Y spokeswoman Molly Thompson.

Thursday’s crowd included “believers and nonbelievers, those who go to church and those who don’t, and Y members and those who aren’t. We even had a group of homeless people,” Thompson said.

They were entertained by Laura Story, a Grammy-winning, Spartanburg-raised Christian music singer-songwriter. She had her own story of finding strength through prayer after husband, Martin, was diagnosed with a brain tumor and survived.

But the spotlight was mainly on Writebol and Jones. They sat at a table on a stage of the vast ballroom, fielding questions from Y volunteer Davis Kuykendall.

Writebol thought she had malaria when she began to feel sick in late July last year – contracting it once before in Liberia.

Her fever didn’t subside, so her doctor in Liberia suggested she take a Ebola test just so they could rule it out.

Days later, her husband of 40 years, David, gave her the bad news and approached her for a hug. Knowing human contact could spread the disease, she waved him off. “It’s going to be OK,” she assured him. “It’s going to be OK.”

Indeed it was OK – through the power of prayer, Writebol told the breakfast.

When she was in critical condition, when her eyesight was fading and she hurt, “I knew God was with me even as we were walking through the shadow of death,” Writebol said. “So prayer prepared me, and God gave me himself during that difficult time.”

She can still feel affects of the disease in her joints. But in March she and David went back to Liberia and found new Ebola patients. In mid-June they plan to return to work with Ebola survivors.

Freed from the unknown

At first, Jones kept his illness a secret, but after talking to former U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, a breast cancer survivor, he went public in a big way.

For weeks, his wife kept a secret from him: that his doctors had told her Jones had months to live.

He stayed at the county’s helm after his diagnosis – until May 2013 when county commissioners fired him. Now he says he has the county “in my rear-view mirror.”

Jones told the crowd he never asked “why,” but he asks his God each morning, “What is it that you want me to do for you?”

He’s started a consulting company and self-published a book about his battle. He travels with his wife and reaches out to others with the disease.

Ever the natty dresser, Jones wore a purple paisley tie (“I wear something purple every day; it’s the color for pancreatic cancer”) and a purple lapel pin in the shape of a ribbon inscribed: “Survivor.”

“Once I beat back the fear, I freed myself from the unknown future,” he said. “I freed myself from sickness and pain – and from self-doubt because I learned to believe. Once you’re free, death is not something that should concern you. You’re living your life in the way you should live it.”

This story was originally published April 30, 2015 at 1:33 PM with the headline "YMCA prayer breakfast hears message of hope through praying."