We drove straight from Hope Community Church in Wales to Bethel Church in Dagenham, Essex and arrived after 4 hours driving.

The Church is located in the middle of a tight-knit housing estate on the edge of a large park; totally different to the Welsh hills from where we'd just come from.

We arrived in the Church's prayer week that they were having for a new building; they had 3 meetings a day for 5 days. The first was at 06:45 – 07:45, the second at 12:30 – 13:30 and the evening meeting was at 19:45 – 21:15.

The morning prayer meetings were led by the Bethel Church leadership but we still attended. Despite being so early there was still a lot of the Church congregation there which just showed how dedicated they are to praying. It was great to see so many people making prayer the first thing of the day.

The afternoon meetings were led by Gayle where she would do a short teaching on prayer and then from that lead the people into practical group prayer. This was a great time and brought a lot of focus and direction into the prayers that people were praying. There were a few more people in these meetings than the morning meetings.

The evening meetings were also led by Gayle after a time of worship and were attended by a good proportion of the Church. Again, in these sessions Gayle gave a teaching which encouraged the Church to pray with determination, direction, specifics and faith. We then spent times in prayer followed by times in worship throughout the night and came away encouraged.

A lot of people commented that the sessions really encouraged them in their own prayer lives and that they went away challenged.