NATIONAL DAY of PRAYER

The National Day of Prayer was established in a joint resolution by Congress and signed by President Harry Truman in 1952. It was amended by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to be set as the First Thursday in May.

It is an interfaith event with many activities in many places. The City of Plano celebrates it with a prayer hour beginning at noon in the Courtyard Theater, 1509 Ave. H . In 2008, the National Day of Prayer falls on May 1^st. A poster for the event is available as 853 Kb Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. A PDF reader is available free from Adobe.

Plano Multicultural Outreach Roundtable has been asked by the City of Plano to organize the event for 2008. A committee of MCOR meets monthly to advance the program. Interested parties, churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship interested in participating in the coming year's event are encouraged to contact the committee chairs, Mary Alice Garza or Jian Li, for meeting times and places.

The program for the day is as follows:

• Musical Prelude (Collin College Chamber Singers, Katherine Morgan, Dir.)
• Welcome (Plano Police & Fire Chaplain, Rev. Jan Sullivan)
• Opening Prayer (Rev. Sullivan)
• PPD Color Guard
• Pledge of Allegiance (all)
• Proclamation (Mayor Pat Evans)
• America the Beautiful (all)
• Bahá'i, Baptist, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish prayers
• Musical Interlude (Dorayne Breedlove, A Slice of Rainbow)
• Lutheran, Methodist, Muslim, Roman Catholic prayers
• Solo vocalist (Caroline Clark, Prestonwood Baptist Church)
• Sending Forth (Rev. Patrick Price, Community Unitarian Univeralist Church)
• Musical Postlude (CCCC Choral)

Leading the prayers will be Mary Jane Peikari (Plano Bahá'i Center), Rev. Isiah Joshua, Jr. (Shiloh Baptist Church), Venerable Ru Ding (IPBS), Rev. Jan Sullivan (Christian Church-Disciples of Christ), Madan Goyal (Sri Ganesha Temple), Rabbi Stefan Weinberg (Anshai Torah Temple), Pastor J. Todd Bruning (Resurrection Lutheran), Rev. David Gonzales (Plano 1^st Methodist Church), Abdul Hadi Khan (IACC, Plano Mosque).

Those who require an exclusively Judeo-Christian service are welcome to attend a National Day of Prayer program at the same hour on the same day in the Plano City Hall Council Chambers. That service is not sponsored by Plano Multicultural Outreach Roundtable whose mission is one of inclusivity.