Calvin student starts weekly prayer gathering on campus
Alyssa Pokharel (front right) takes a photo with students after a Wednesday morning prayer gathering.
“Prayer is there all the time, but you don’t see the significance or value of what it could be.”
Alyssa Pokharel, a junior from Kathmandu, Nepal, has experienced prayer in classes, in dorms, in bible studies, and before meals during her time at Calvin University.
“It’s everywhere. It’s embedded into the way we live out our faith,” said Pokharel. “But I think there’s just so much more potential for us to learn about what prayer can be.”
Prompted to pray
In January 2024, Pokharel felt a prompt from the Lord to focus on prayer. At the time, she was a discipleship leader in the dorms and said prayer, particularly intercessory prayer, was a spiritual discipline she didn’t feel she was good at and so she shied away from it.
“Campus Ministries did a lot to show us the significance of spiritual disciplines, faith practices that really open up this whole new world of beautiful relationship with God,” said Pokharel.
So, she made it her New Year’s resolution to focus on prayer, having no idea where God would take that desire. A few weeks later, sitting in a breakout session at the CICW Worship Symposium, “I felt this voice, this tug within me prompting me to start a prayer gathering at Calvin,” said Pokharel.
As days and weeks passed after that event, conversation after conversation confirmed that prompt in Pokharel’s heart to be from the Lord.
And while that calling was confirmed, the importance of starting this gathering was personally felt.
“During this time I was going through a hard season and sometimes I’d have a day with so much peace for seemingly no reason,” said Pokharel. “And my friend Anna would text me and say, ‘I’m praying for you today.’ And I’d think ‘this peace can only be from God,’ it was a tangible way of showing me that prayer has such real power.”
Giving the Lord space to speak
In March 2024, Pokharel took a step of obedience and started a weekly prayer gathering on Wednesday mornings from 7 to 8 a.m. in the basement of the university chapel. And while there was no formal structure to begin with, certain aspects of prayer have become central, including a centering prayer where students sit in silence and give everything they are carrying with them to the Lord, confess sins privately, and then enter into a time of intercession.
“We ask the Lord to put on our hearts what he wants us to pay attention to, what he wants us to intercede for. Every week there is something he’s speaking to multiple people at the same time,” said Pokharel. “Sometimes we just need to give the Lord space to speak before we present our list.
“The powers of evil are so real and are all around us and so we want to rebuke all powers of evil that have a foothold in any part of campus,” said Pokharel. “Intercession is the way the Lord invites us to have a role in fighting against evil.”
Iron sharpening iron
While Pokharel is enjoying the time to commune with the Lord, she’s also seeing the power of prayer to unite a community.
“We often see prayer as such an individualistic thing,” said Pokharel. “I have weeks where I’m just so tired and I don’t want to pray, but because of this rhythm set in our community and a commitment to being led by these people who show up, their faith lifts me up to a space to be able to pray. I think we often overlook the importance of our community in our faith practices.”
And Pokharel knows ultimately it’s not even the strength of the community that she’s dependent on.
“When we come to prayer, we know it’s not something we perfect, not something we do in our own strength,” said Pokharel. “Romans 8:26 says that the Spirit himself intercedes for us.”
While it’s clear this small gathering of praying students is making an impact at Calvin, Pokharel is also hearing about the ripple effects beyond campus.
“Yesterday one of my friends texted me and said I wanted to let you know that our prayer gathering has inspired a prayer gathering at our church.”
Testifying to the power of prayer
Even more personally, Pokharel knows the power of prayer within her own family.
“My mom [Bimala Shrestha Pokharel] went to Calvin back in 1995, but she basically came to Calvin just because she got offered a full scholarship,” said Pokharel, who said her mom was Hindu and “didn’t love the fact that everyone was Christian and would say ‘we’re praying for you.’”
Bimala and her husband Arbin would later attend Calvin Theological Seminary and are now missionaries in Nepal.
“Somehow God found her here [at Calvin] and there were some really good people who were influential in her life,” said Pokharel. “I grew up hearing about that and ever since I was five years old, I was like, ‘I’m going to Calvin.’”
Now, 16 years later, Pokharel and her peers are laying a foundation of prayer for the next generation.
