Morgantown joined more than 400 cities across the country to participate in Awaken the Dawn Saturday.
According to its website, Awaken the Dawn is a “grassroots movement of day and night worship, prayer and missions.”
The hosts of Saturday’s event, David Woof and Michael Hamm, set up their tent in the courthouse square in downtown Morgantown to hold a 36-hour ongoing worship and prayer. Other cities, according to Woof, are participating in the revival with even longer events.
“We’re pretty tame … a lot of others are going 50 hours,” Woof said.
Hamm said the mission is simply to spread their love of the gospel with the city of Morgantown.
“At the end of the day, I think that the goal is to say, ‘Jesus, we really love you,’ and to express the love of God to the people in this city,” Hamm said.
According to Woof, Friday was the fifth day of the Feast of Tabernacle, also referred to as Sukkot, which is a biblical Jewish holiday. Their tent was set up in the traditional fashion for the holy day, including offerings of fruit as a modern-day expression and interpretation of the day.
At 5 p.m. Friday, they blew a ram horn to signify calling the people together to worship, as per tradition.
Carrie Hill, worship leader of Jewel City Church, traveled all the way from Shinnston to participate in Saturday’s gathering.
Two lieutenants from the Salvation Army, Sheldon and Nicole Greenland, partnered with Hamm and Woof to help with the 36-hour revival. Sheldon and Nicole said, in addition to this particular revival, Salvation Army is also hosting a country-wide revival for the organization — so it was fortuitous to be able to come together toward a similar goal Saturday.
Nicole said Maryland’s and West Virginia’s Salvation Army locations wanted to express the same mission of spreading faith. In addition, they are also sharing the history of the Salvation Army, and talking about the founder, William Booth, who was a religious man. According to the Coming Revival website, Booth “sought to bring into his worship services an informal atmosphere that would encourage new converts.”
With the country-wide revival of Awaken the Dawn and the Salvation Army in the region celebrating similar missions, it was coincidental but meaningful timing, according to Nicole.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Nicole said.
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