The Around-the-Clock Prayer Effort to Save the Haiti Hostages

Seventeen missionaries remain held for a large ransom. And so, every 30 minutes, another family or church takes up the mantle. Waiting. Praying through the night.

Hours before they usually rise, Rosemary and Delbert Petersheim’s alarm goes off, waking them to pray in the pitch-black night.

They had heard the news on Saturday afternoon about the kidnapping of 17 missionaries in Haiti, a group that included a family and another young man whom they knew through connections to their small Mennonite church in Cuba, Mo. When someone on the church’s GroupMe text chain shared a spreadsheet with time slots to pray for the missionaries, the Petersheims quickly signed up for an early-morning shift.

Mrs. Petersheim, a mother of six, thought especially of the small children in the group, possibly hungry and definitely restless. So, each morning now she wakes up at 2:45 a.m. and prays for practical matters: that they will not experience hunger, that they will not be hurt or abused, for sleep and privacy and hygiene.