A group of friends started a prayer group that grew to have global reach. Now, they’ve published three books for daily reflection
by Tyler Cunningham

In March of 2020, the coronavirus had been in the United States for at least a month, yet there was still much uncertainty surrounding it. The World Health Organization declared a pandemic and the governors of our most populated states began issuing stay-at-home orders, launching us into an increasingly isolated new normal. 

In the predawn hours that month, Raleigh resident Lekita Essa sat in prayer. “The major concern I had for people was isolation. I just felt like there was so much fear,” says Essa. The founder and owner of Lekita Care, a caregiving business for families in health crises, Essa was acutely aware of how detrimental it could be for people to lack a support system in a time of crisis. “I just remember thinking it would be wonderful to be a part of a group that could pray together every day, to give people a sense of being connected,” Essa says.

Willa Kane was also having trouble sleeping when her phone rang. “It was 5 in the morning and she answered the phone!” Essa recalls in astonishment. She shared her idea and they made a plan to ask friends to pray for eight minutes at 8 p.m. each night. “I knew I could pass the baton to Willa and, like an Olympic sprinter, she would keep the baton going,” Essa says.

A trustee of the American Anglican Council and founding member of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Raleigh, Kane had a deep well of faithful friends to engage, and she wasted no time. She immediately sent an email to a handful of contacts in different spheres of ministry, asking them to pray. “I had no idea something would grow beyond our group of friends and family,” says Kane.

Two of the friends on the receiving end of Kane’s email were Madison Perry and Sally Breedlove. Perry is the executive director of the North Carolina Study Center, a center for Christian life and thought at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “In my job, I try to equip college students and faculty to thrive, and when the world was in crisis in the early days and months of the pandemic, I wondered how I could do my job in this season,” says Perry. When Kane’s email arrived, Perry offered to build a website to house these invitations to prayer. “Zoom calls weren’t that prevalent then, and the only way to gather was online,” says Perry. “A website and email list felt like natural ways to solidify a group of people that wanted to join a common effort.”

Perry created the outline, but Breedlove colored inside the lines. “Sally came almost pre-loaded and ready to go. I think it really was the fruit of a lifetime of faithfulness and prayer and scripture,” says Perry. In response to Kane’s email, Breedlove offered her words for site content. As the author of Choosing Rest, a book focused on how scripture can lead us to cultivate an attitude of rest, Breedlove understood the practice of writing and offering tools for living through scripture passages. “God has talked to us first, again and again in so many ways,” says Breedlove. “Learning to talk back to Him doesn’t come out of a method or a certain kind of church or emotional experience — when we begin to gather words inside ourselves to respond, that’s what prayer is.” 

The friends had a website live within 24 hours of that early morning call, then decided to create a Facebook group for conversation. Perry began posting the daily web scriptures and prayers to that group, and within three weeks, nearly 15,000 people around the world had joined. “It was virtually wrapping the world in prayer at a time when the world felt so dark. It felt as if pinpricks of light of the Gospel were penetrating that darkness,” says Kane. 

As the world continued to readjust and recalibrate, the community sustained itself through each new iteration of normalcy. After a couple of years, they wanted something physical to accompany their prayers. With the help of writer and editor Alysia Yates, the four began their work on what is now Eighth Day Prayers, a three-volume series offering daily scripture, reflection and prayer guiding the reader through the liturgical seasons of Advent, Lent and Ordinary Time.

The first volume, Eighth Day Prayers, Daily Hope for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, was released in bookstores and online in fall 2024. Eighth Day Prayers, Daily Mercy for Lent and Eastertide was released in January of this year, and the third and final volume, Eighth Day Prayers, Daily Joy for Ordinary Time became available in February.  

“Most people don’t know the meaning of the ‘eighth day’ and I didn’t know it, either, until I got drawn into this project,” says Yates. “The eighth day is a curiously Christian term. It is a day after the Jewish Sabbath, the day Jesus rose from the grave. It is also a way of describing the time in which we live here and now. We live in the eighth day, the space between Jesus’ resurrection and His return.” Naming the book series after this concept became, Yates says, “an invitation to a new way of keeping time, one rooted in the rhythm of creation that carries us forward.” 

The group has been pleased with how the book has been received at private events and signings at Quail Ridge. “One of the miracles of this project was how loosely we all held it and how joyfully we collaborated — it was like an effortless dance,” says Kane. “One of the great lessons of my life is that we only need to be great at small things and the Lord can do the really big things.”

This article originally appeared in the April 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.