The Third Annual Soybean Prayer Breakfast was held Wednesday morning at Martin's First Baptist Church.

This year's prayer breakfast was the largest since it began in 2001, with over 100 people attending the 6:45 a.m. program. The breakfast was put on by the Martin Area Ministerial Alliance and is designed to bring together people from different backgrounds and religious beliefs to labor in prayer for our community.

The program included the singing of hymns, special music from Craig Ingram, a devotional challenge, and of course, prayer for various needs in the community. The speaker was Dr. George Daniel, Director of Institutional Research and Planning at UTM, and he spoke on the subject of the harvest, both agriculturally and spiritually. Dr. Daniel, having grown up on a farm, said that farmers often live poor in this life but die rich if they know God personally. He then likened the life of a Christian to that of a farmer by explaining that, like a farmer, a Christian needs five things: commitment, perseverance, work, acceptance, and patience. "It was a refreshing reminder that in this life we may live poor, but if we know Christ we can die rich. The law of the harvest is an irrefutable law-we always reap what we sow; this is true spiritually as well as agriculturally," said Dr. Roger S. Oldham, pastor of First Baptist Church.

Other than the prayer for the blessing of the meal offered by Rodney Freed, there were three areas of need targeted with prayer. Dave Reinhart offered a prayer of gratitude and intercession for the timely rains, Robert Gardner offered a prayer of commitment, and Carol Dickerson offered a prayer for healing of our land as the benediction.

"It was good to see so many people from different churches and backgrounds in the community to come together for the common purpose of prayer," said Gavin Breeden, a freshman Psychology major. "It was good to see so many committed to pray for the community, and the bacon was good," said Aaron Kennedy, a senior Social Work major.