Louisville community sees small changes after prayer circle

LOUISVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Last month, hundreds of men from Louisville got on their knees and prayed for their families and their city.

And just weeks later they are seeing more prayer circles happening within the community and in schools.

Loving your neighbor is important especially when you are in a close-knit community.

However, in places like Louisville, it seems like they have seen more crime than love in the past months.

That’s why men in the community are coming together to help bring about change.

On February 22, around 300 men joined each other inside the Louisville Coliseum to pray for their community.

While it’s only been two weeks since the initial meeting, they are already seeing small changes.

City leaders like Police Chief Sean Holdiness and Assistant Police Chief Ed Hunt said this prayer meeting is giving them hope for the future.

“I think what we have going on now, I think it’s going to help a lot and make these young men realize I can do better. I can be a better role model to my younger siblings and I can be a better role model to the community,” said Hunt.

“Men are lifting their hands up and lifting us up in prayer and I can’t tell you how much it fills my heart and encourages me to do a better job for our community,” said Holdiness.

And while this meeting did touch the hearts of the men who attended, community members like Preston Foster want that good feeling to continue and to spread.

“The people that started it asked somebody to stand up and be a leader. I was the first one and I said I would make sure everything gets taken care of and gets done,” said Foster.

Foster said since the initial meeting there have been dozens of people joining the effort.

“It’s taken off from there. We’ve had 60 plus in both meetings. It’s very humbling,” said Foster.

Foster is hoping for more men to join in each week.

“I hate that it took something such as the shootings that we’ve had to happen for someone to step up and make a change but as we know it did happen and from that, we have this amazing movement of men coming together from different walks of life. Different denominations and different religions and I don’t care what religion you are or what denomination you are. We are all striving for the same thing. We are all wanting to see change come into the county of Winston County and to the city limits of Louisville,” said Foster.

Foster’s next goal is to bring men in the community together to start a mentoring program.

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