Cyber-Ministry Built on Pain and a Prayer

“God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

--C.S. Lewis

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Betrayed by her body, Ann Moore and her husband, Dick, are living out their retirement quite differently than they’d planned.

“We were going to travel,” Dick said with a smile.

But Ann needs to sleep in a hospital-style bed and has trouble walking, effects of a long list of illnesses that have left pain ricocheting through her body. Every minute of every day.

The pain is bad enough to bring the Moores to their knees, which they’ve discovered is a good place to meet God.

“When you’re healthy, you sometimes don’t see the need to pray,” said Ann Moore, 64. “When you’re sick, you realize how very fragile you are and how temporary life is.”

So instead of jetting around the world, Ann Moore spends much of her golden years in a tiny office in her Mission Viejo home, where she runs an innovative e-mail prayer ministry. Five times a day, Moore--using the e-mail address DickAnnMor@aol.com--

jumps on the computer, downloads prayer requests and “praise reports” (answered prayers) and relays them to her team of 100 “prayer partners.”

The genesis of her prayer ministry began in 1995 at a now-defunct Irvine church. When the church merged with another, her former congregation still wanted Moore’s prayer ministry. So she went into cyberspace, a new frontier where she wasn’t dependent on the usual ministry tools--buildings, meeting times, phone calls or the U.S. Postal Service--and prayer requests could be relayed instantly to hundreds of people.

“I’d just as soon not have any pain, but it’s given me a ministry and connection,” Moore said. “You live on the shallow side of life until you’ve gone through some pain.”

Martha Whittington of Irvine needs a lot of prayer. She has lupus, which causes joint pain, migraine headaches and back pain so severe “you just want to scream.” On Dec. 1, she’s having surgery to replace both knees.

Moore will send out a different prayer each day for Whittington. Monday’s was: “I am asking you to pray that the new knees will work and that her bones will accept the artificial joints.”

“It means a lot to me to know that I have people who don’t even know me who are constantly praying for me on a daily basis,” said Whittington, 49. “That just brings tears to my eyes. My pain level has gone down quite a bit, and that’s an answer to prayer.

“Even the tiniest things--like being able to brush your teeth.”

This week, Ann Moore’s prayer list contained 19 requests, which range from the routine--”Please continue to pray for Kellie and her baby during this important first trimester of her pregnancy”--to the heart-stopping--”Brittney, Robert and Sam are suffering from a genetic disease that will probably take their lives before the age of 7. The oldest of the three affected children is now 5. Please pray for God’s intervention in their lives. Pray for wisdom for the doctors that they may find a cure or a way to halt the progression of the disease.”

Moore, whose own burdens include arthritis, recent back surgery and an illness that causes intense muscular pain, limits the list to 20 or so requests a week. She doesn’t want her prayer partners, who commit to praying for everyone on the list daily, to be overwhelmed. And she’s also big on specifics. The lists often resemble a doctor’s medical chart.

“God likes to answer prayers--no matter how small,” Moore said.

Or how big.

A little more than three years ago, Marge Sase, an Irvine resident, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Her doctor didn’t give her much time. So she turned to prayer.

“How do I explain this?” Sase asked. “This prayer group has such a powerful impact on me. I do worry about my condition, but I don’t dwell on it. I just know their prayers are very powerful. I’m three-years-plus vertical.

“Ann’s just like an angel to me.”

Sase’s story isn’t unique. Moore’s prayer partners get daily e-mails from people praising God for answering their prayers.

“It builds our faith when we have a good report from someone we’re praying for,” Moore said.

In addition to sending out a flurry of e-mails five times a day, Moore and her husband take turns praying for the people on their list. They spend about 30 minutes each night praying aloud.

“For me, if I don’t say my prayers out loud, I can get sleepy and my mind starts to wander,” Moore said. “It’s just sort of talking to the Lord.”

Moore doesn’t know the answer to the question she lives with every day. Why does a loving God allow good people to suffer? But she has a theory.

“If you’re a piece of clay and someone is scraping, twisting and pushing their thumb into you to prepare you to be something special,” Moore said, “it might not feel good. We don’t like it, but we don’t know why it’s being done or what the final product will look like. We see it from the clay’s viewpoint, not from the potter’s.”