FOLLOWING IS SOME TRULY SAD NEWS CONCERNING THE WHITE HOUSE PRAYER MEETING GROUP Prayer Force One,THAT HAS BEEN PRAYING FOR THE WHITE HOUSE AND OUR NATION FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS AND THE NEW DEVELOPMENT AS OF 12 NOON, JANUARY 20, 2009.

OBAMA TEAM PREEMPTS WHITE HOUSE PRAYER MEETING

Dear American Prayer Warriors,

As you know, for the past two years, Prayer Force One has hosted a virtual White House prayer meeting in the various rooms of The White House by linking directly to The White House web site. As you may also know, former President Bush wrote Prayer Force One and thanked us for our prayers.

However, at the stroke of 12:00 noon on Inauguration Day, January 20th, the new Obama White House web site went live with the effect of cutting off our daily White House prayer meeting. When many of you tried to log-in to the prayer meeting, you saw this post from The White House:

Due to these events, we have received a deluge of e-mails. We thank you for the expressions of concern about the future of our beloved White House Prayer Meeting.

I have delayed my response for one week for several reasons. First, we have been on the road, to and from Austin, Texas, where we participated in the annual meeting of The National Prayer Committee. Second, we wanted to collect and send the reactions of our prayer partners. Third, for prudence sake, we wanted to have time to see if the White House site had purposely removed the interactive tours in order to stop our prayer meetings, and whether this was a temporary inconvenience or a permanent obstacle. Before I respond, I first include a sampling of the e-mails we have received since Inauguration Day.

A SAMPLING OF YOUR LETTERS:

Hi Ed:

A friend and I have tried to log unto the White House room for prayer and it is no longer available. It said the Obama administration has changed it? Please advise.

Thank you.
L.H. from Pennsylvania

Ed,

I am sure you have heard from others, but when I attempted to click on the White House photo for the virtual prayer walk yesterday, I was redirected to the Obama Administration web site saying that they have changed the White House web site so I could not find the video of the East Room you spoke about in the e-mail.

In Christ,
G.L. from Texas

Message:

A short time ago, I was praying at the site of the Oval Office. I clicked over to pray in the East Room, and got the message the page I had requested was unavailable. Is this a problem at your end, or has your White House accessibility suddenly been cut off? (I certainly hope it is the former)!

Thank you,
J.B. from Oklahoma

OUR RESPONSE:

1. There is no sure way of knowing what motivated the Obama White House to discontinue the beautiful interactive video tours of the various rooms of the Executive Mansion. Their removal will be a tragic loss to the American people. The only thing that we can say for sure is that, for now, their removal spells the end of our daily Prayer Force One, White House Prayer Meeting. Please know that my heart, like many of yours, is greatly saddened by this turn of events.

2. We are indeed thankful to President Bush for his letter thanking us for our prayer efforts in the past. Because of the courtesy of the Bush White House, we were able to grow a national prayer meeting which many tens of thousands have come to love and enjoy. Again, thank you President Bush!

3. We are now exploring options that will allow us to enjoy the continued unity that we experienced during our prayer time together in The White House. These options will certainly include a letter to President Obama. Other options will be to continue our virtual prayer meeting in other meaningful "virtual" locations.In order to do this, it might mean that we have to develop our own "i-pix style" camera to prepare for such prayer meetings. If this happens, we could pray anywhere in America - from the U.S. Capitol rotunda to the Grand Canyon! Expense would be the major challenge in doing this.

4. We will never, never quit in our pursuit of promoting unity in prayer for our nation! We will leave no innovative stone unturned in exploring ways that we can continue these national, virtual, unifying, Prayer Force One prayer meetings in the days ahead.

lET'S ALL JOIN WITH ED AND SANDY MOORE AND THE THOUSANDS WHO WERE USING THE SITE TO JOINTLY PRAY FOR OUR NATION AND OUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF DURING THESE DIFFICULT DAYS.

We pray it is simply an oversight on the part of the White House staff and not a policy decision.

Thank you friends.

xtnyoda