Several years ago, Mountain View Baptist Church in Phil Campbell had a special speaker that Terry Pounders wouldn’t forget.
Not only that — he felt like he had to do something.
“Terry Long came and spoke about his book, ‘100 Days at the Cross,’” Pounders said. “His stories inspired me.”
Long, associational missionary for Choctaw Baptist Association, visited Mountain View Baptist after their pastor, Sammy Taylor, read Long’s story in The Alabama Baptist. Long retold that story at Mountain View — the story of how in 2012, he put up a cross on a busy roadside in Mississippi and simply did one thing — prayed.
When word got around that someone was praying for people at the cross, people pulled off the road all day long to ask for prayer. Long would pray for them, write down their prayer requests and have them nail them to the cross, and then he would ask them if they knew Jesus.
In that 100-day period, more than 1,500 people came to the cross to share their prayer requests, and around 30 put their faith in Christ for the first time.
Inspired
After hearing that story, Pounders and his wife decided to drive to Mississippi to see the cross, then they decided to put one up in their area too. They asked about putting it at Mountain View Baptist, but Taylor suggested they put it at the top of Spruce Pine Mountain where it might get more traffic.
So Pounders started working toward that.
The owner of that property agreed to let him put a cross there, and Pounders decided to make it into a public prayer garden. A group got together and helped him get everything done, from drilling the hole for the cross to designing the sign.
“Anyone who wants to can come and pray,” he said. “We’ve got a bench there for people to sit on and a box with tracts, books, bracelets and coins that all share the gospel message.”
In the several years since Pounders started the garden, he said many people have gone by and spent time with God and pinned their prayer requests to the cross.
“We know once a windstorm came through that knocked down big trees, but all the requests stayed on the cross — not a one blew off,” Pounders said.
He said he’d like to see others make spaces like this “because people need a place to be alone with God.”
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