Ann Arbor 40 DFL Prayer Volunteers
Sandie HAD HONOR OF SHARING YOUR STORY
at Recent 40 Days For Life
Leadership Symposium in Phoenix AZ!
You are Amazing!
President Trump sent us a message!
You can view President Trump's message
in the event program by clicking here:
https://40daysforlife.com/2018-summer-symposium-program/
See Page 3 of 21 Pages! * * *
Your Ann Arbor 40 DFL Campaign Director, Sandie Weathers
Recently Attended a
40 Days For Life
Leader Symposium in Phoenix
and Participated in a Five Member Panel Presentation
on "Proven Strategies for Filling Your Vigil Schedule"
Please see pages 6 and 16 of 21 pages
of the Program linked above! The following is Sandie's presentation!
Good afternoon! As Steve said my name is Sandie Weathers and I am the campaign director in Ann Arbor MI. I have been married to a wonderfully supportive husband for 47 years. We have three super children and 12 grandchildren.
We have an awesome team of prayer warriors in Ann Arbor and I cherish the opportunity to share our story.
After moving back to Michigan in 1996, I became very involved in our parishes' pro-life committee. Each month for years a very lovely couple (Don and Anne Courtois) on our pro-life committee, invited me to join them to pray outside of Planned Parenthood at 9:30 on Saturday mornings. Each month I turned down their invitation. I totally resisted the idea of praying outside of Planned Parenthood.
Then 40 DFL came to Ann Arbor in the Fall of 2007 and I felt I needed an attitude adjustment. We were scheduled to begin the campaign at 12 midnight, and I arrived at 11:30, even though I NEVER get anywhere early. I needed to check out the lay of the land. I must have been very nervous, as I drove right into the Planned Parenthood parking lot and parked. A very nice seminarian tapped on my window and told me he didn't think I really wanted to park there. I really have an appreciation for people who do not want to leave their comfort zone and pray outside of an abortion facility, because I was that person.
Now whenever I am near the PP, I have to go there and pray. I pull up in front of the island and park and pray.
During the 1st campaign that I lead, in the fall of 2014, I was able to assemble a simple four person team, two of which were new to 40 Days For Life. We were committed to filling the hours at our prayer vigil for four day only, from Wed to Sat. We each concentrated on covering one day, by contacting pro-life friends in each of our individual faith communities. We did not follow the training instructions, during that campaign. Yes, I admit that we did it imperfectly, believing that it is better to do something constructively imperfectly for the Lord than to do nothing perfectly. That first campaign, I learned that it is ok to hold a 12 hour a day vigil. I did not keep records of how many hours that we covered during that 1st campaign, I bet we covered maybe half of the hours.
Our team determined very early, that it is vital for potential volunteers to learn the lay of the land outside of PP. When a team member was working on filling her Saturday hours, she decided to let her contacts know that she would be at PP the upcoming Saturday for five hours in order to show them the ropes. She had sixteen new volunteers take her up on her offer. Her efforts bore much fruit as many of those sixteen people are dedicated weekly volunteers today.
During my 2nd campaign as leader, the spring of 2015, we filled 450 or our 480 vigil hours. We started off very strong during the first three day filling ever hour with at least one volunteer despite the fact that the actual temperature at 7 am was 20 degrees below 0, with the real feel even worse. Friday evening, day three, I received a phone call that we had had a SAVE that day. Great news! Praise God. We needed to keep the momentum going, but no one was scheduled for the 7 am and 8 am hours the next morning? This was a turning point for me. My salesman husband often told me that if you want to get a string from point A to point B, you had to pull it, that you could not get it there by pushing it. It was a make it or break it moment. Determined to fill every hour that I was physically able to fill, I covered the 7 am and 8 am hours that Saturday morning. I covered over 50 hours that campaign in fact.
At the end of that campaign it occurred to me that I could not and should not try to sustain that approach. For the 3rd campaign, we established Day Captains for all seven days and have been relying on them heavily ever since. In theory, if they don't find a volunteer, to fill an hour, then they will to cover the hour.
Here is some really great news! Over the next three years, or 6 campaigns we covered 2,867 hours of the 2,880 hours we were committed to cover. That means we only failed to cover 13 hours. During our most recent campaign this past lent, we had 99 prayer volunteers that made a weekly commitment and often more. We had an additional 65 volunteers that covered 1 to 3 hours each during the campaign. These volunteers have taken ownership of our campaign to End Abortion in Ann Arbor..
When I took over leading 40 DFL in Ann Arbor, I was given a three inch binder, which contained a history of the Ann Arbor campaigns starting in the Fall of 2007. It was over whelming to me, and the only thing I gleamed out of it was a report from the State of Michigan, giving county by county stats on how many mothers had had abortions over a 10 year span of time. A volunteer who is a statistical analysis took that report and created "The Chart" and has been updating it every year since.
(During Q & A, Sandie shared that the SAFL on the chart stands for Sidewalk Advocates for Life and that many of our prayer volunteers want to do more following the Lenten and Fall campaigns, so they get trained through SAFL and sidewalk counsel at Planned Parenthood often year round.)
We hold our Kickoff Rallies right outside of Planned Parenthood, so we can give participants a lay of the land.
Using the information which we collected on the Statements of Peace we created a Master Contact List in google docs.
Using our Master Contact List we are able to indicate which time and days prayer volunteers are available and use that information to distribute calling list for our day captions. (Our secret is out!)
We sparingly send out emails when we have an immediate need for hours to be filled in the next three days. I believe because we do this so sparingly, volunteers jump right in and help if they can.
We make sure to let our volunteers know when there are SAVES! And also Urgent Prayer Requests. We also keep them abreast of how we are doing with filling the hours! Helps them take ownership.
Thank you ALL for ALL you do for LIFE! You and 40 DFL Rock!
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