- Ten Days Of Prayer isan international event.

A season of prayer and worship

with the goal of havingJesus Christ as the focus

of every heart in a cityfor ten entire days.

Bridgeport, Connecticutis one of the locations

where it was held this yearand God moved mightily.

Dexter Upshaw, Jr. is the pastor

of New Vision InternationalMinistries in Bridgeport.

This side of Ten DaysOf Prayer in that city,

he joins us now by Skype.

Welcome, Pastor Dexter!

- I'm glad to be here,nice to be with you, Mark.

- Talk about how TenDays Of Prayer started.

- Wow, it actuallystarted about 3 years ago.

There were a group ofpastors who came together,

a division of the NationalTen Days Of Prayer,

and decided that they wantedit to be in Bridgeport.

It actually started out under a tent

next to the ballpark here in the city.

It was outdoors for about 7 days.

Hundreds of people wereshowing up each night.

And then one day, the weather shifted.

It got cold, the tent started shaking.

And so, one of my good pastor friends,

Pastor Louis Bergo, said,

"Hey, can we come to New Vision?"

And it's kinda been here eversince for consecutive years.

- What is the goal of the event?

- The goal of the event is prayer.

The whole premise iswhat happens when a city,

an entire city, stops to pray?

And so literally ourvision is that Bridgeport

would take ten days, it'sbetween Rosh Hashanah

and Yom Kippur, these are the days of awe

according to the Jewish calendarand the Jewish New Year.

And we're just gonna stop and pray.

Pray for transformation,pray for breakthrough.

Not just for individuals,but for the city as a whole.

- Why is it important to hold this event

during those days of awe?

- Well, from my understanding,it's significant

'cause Rosh Hashanahis the Jewish New Year

and the beginning of the calendar.

And literally the belief isthat the heavens are open.

And we believe that during these ten days,

through the unity that we've seen

that God literally opens upthe heavens in Bridgeport.

He gives revelation throughthe many intercessors

and pastors who come together.

And we genuinely seebreakthrough and transformation.

We see healing, we see deliverance.

We see lives come back to the Father.

We see people who were straying

away from the faith coming back.

We see baptisms, we see all of that.

And so combined with the Jewish calendar,

as believers, New Testament believers,

we just believe that Godis moving during that time.

- Talk a little bit more aboutwhat happened in Bridgeport,

like you said there, Godmoved in a mighty way.

And I understand hundredsattended each night.

- Yeah, so we kicked it off in downtown

in an open air worship nighton the 9th of September.

And there were close to 700 people out

proclaiming Jesus publicly.

And then we symbolicallywalked from downtown

to our location in thesouth end of Bridgeport,

where we establisheda 24-hour prayer room.

From September 9th through September 19th,

our campus was open for 24hours of prayer and worship.

We worked together with different churches

from across the regionto get worship teams.

So literally you could come to the church

and at 3 o'clock in the morning

there was someone doing a worship set.

4AM, 6AM, 12 noon, 3PM.

And then at 7PM every night, we had

a unity worship service that ranged

from 400 to 700 people on a nightly basis.

And it was just so powerful to see

the body of Christ become one.

- That's wonderful andwhen we spoke earlier

on the phone you said a man got out

of his wheelchair afterpeople prayed for him.

Tell us what happened.

- Yeah, so on the very first night

there's a gentleman named Louis,

he was in a wheelchair andwe were outside and downtown

you know folks just began to pray for him.

And in that moment of prayer and worship,

he stood and it was anamazing sight to behold.

But some things were shifting in his life

according to the testimony of his wife.

And he got to a place where he wanted

to come to the revivals each evening

and on the very lastnight there was a group

of pastors and intercessorswho prayed healing

over his body and he'sbeen wheelchair-bound.

He did something that he hasn't done.

He stood up and not only did he stand up,

he walked about fifteenfeet and he was moving

his legs on his own andhe was regaining feeling

in his right side of the body.

(clearing throat)

And he hadn't been talking,but he could say "Hallelujah!"

And so the entire churchI mean just erupted

because you know we're not doing this

for shape, form or fashion.

We want to see genuine transformation.

That was a sign that God had been moving

and is continuing to move in our city.

- Praise the Lord, you're right.

Well you also told me aboutMuslims accepting Christ.

Can you elaborate on that?

- Yes, well we have a testimony wall

and on that testimony wallthere's probably at least

I want to say 200testimonies and on the wall

there was a statement thatsomeone who was a Muslim

came and came to thefaith after spending time

in prayer and worship in the services.

But there are a variety of testimonies.

People being healed from diabetes,

being healed from anxiety, depression.

Overcoming sexualimmorality, people who prayed

for their family to get saved,

they got saved, and thentheir husband got saved.

And you know they increased their witness

to their friends andbringing people to church.

We had a range oftestimonies on that wall.

- Talk about the unity that was exhibited

between the different churches involved.

You touched on that earlier,

but talk a little bit more about that.

- Yeah.

- You know I think as Christians

and especially as a pastor, we've all been

to gatherings that havebeen talking about unity

and diversity and you know many times

we walk away from thosegatherings unfulfilled

because you know it just becomes

a performance in some cases.

I don't think that's intentional

but that's just the wayit is in a lot of circles.

What's special about TenDays Of Prayer Bridgeport

is that the churchliterally became one church.

We melded staffs together.

Imagine, you're trying to run a campus

for ten days, 24 hours, you know.

We had multiple churcheswith multiple safety teams

coming together as one.

Multiple ushers and greeterscoming together as one.

Multiple administratorscoming together as one.

So literally not onlydid we worship together

but we worked together,we prayed together.

Sometimes you fell asleep (laughing)

in the same room together'cause you just so exhausted

from having to be on site for 24 hours.

And the real fruit of this unity

is the relationships beyond the event.

We have pastors who are finding

their best friends through this event.

Intercessors who are connecting

with lifelong friends nowfrom different churches,

different denominations,members of congregations

going to other Biblestudies and other churches.

And there's no sense of competition.

It's just this sense that God is moving

and there's true genuine fellowship

happening here in our city.

- The Ten Days Of Prayer, or the ten days,

did involve prayer and worship

but I understand evangelismalso was involved.

Can you talk about that?

- Yeah, so this year weintroduced 24-hour evangelism.

We had evangelistic teams that would

be out during the servicebut also in the wee hours

of the morning: 3 o'clock,4 o'clock in the morning.

Going to different parksand different main streets

and just witnessing to people,sharing the love of Jesus.

They carried backpacks andthey would meet felt needs.

If someone needed foodthey tried to accommodate.

They needed socks, they would go get it.

There were times whenpeople would actually come,

from the streets, to the prayer room.

And they would spend timein prayer and overnight.

And we had one testimony of a young man

who they found in the streets.

They brought him back, notonly did he give his life

to Christ, but by thetime ten days was over,

he'd found a job, he'dfound a place to live.

And it's just powerful to see how God

was moving in the lives of so many people.

Especially those who were outside

the four walls of the church.

- Yeah that is definitelya God thing there.

This was livestreamed around the world.

What kind of response did you all have?

- Oh, my goodness.

We had people turning infrom all over the world.

People peeping in to Bridgeport.

And this is big for usbecause if you can remember

back in the 80s wheneverpeople talked about Bridgeport

we were known for this city with lots

of drug violence, we werefamous I think in the 90s

for the mayor putting jersey barriers

in the street to tryslow down the drug deals

from occurring within our city.

There's always so much bad news

but we had people loggingin from across the world

saying, "Man, something isstirring up in Bridgeport!"

We had people that wouldcome to the worship service,

they would hop in their cars and then

they would watch onlineas they drove home.

And then they would listen to the worship

while they were sleeping

and then they would wakeup and they'd get ready

to go to work, they'rebrushing their teeth,

listening to whoever's worshiping

at that moment from the prayer room.

They would go to work,sitting in their cubicle

with their headphoneson, or in some cases,

they were playing it for everybody

in their department andthey stayed connected

with the event 24 hours a day.

And so it was beautiful just to see people

so plugged in and so connected

and so impacted throughthe digital platform.

- Amen.

Well do you believe that this event

in Bridgeport is a catalystto Christian revivals

spreading throughoutNew England as a whole?

- I earnestly believe that.

And so if we have friendsin the Bible Belt, Midwest,

New England is definitelynot the Bible Belt

but according to what we understand

in the history of this country,

if it's not the BibleBelt, it's the belt buckle.

So much started here in New England.

So much revival occurredback 200, 300 years ago.

And to a certain extent,New England has kind of

strayed away from its original purpose.

But we believe that revival is happening

and we believe it's gonnastart in the urban center.

Bridgeport is a mosaic of cultures.

It's people here withthe 24 hours of prayer

and Ten Days Of Prayer we had

folks of Puerto Rican descent,

we had folks of African-American,

African, across thediaspora, Brazil, Columbia.

Bridgeport is the type of city

where you find all thosepeople in one place.

Bridgeport is the largest cityin the state of Connecticut.

Connecticut is therichest state per capita

but the largest wealth gap in the country

is between Bridgeport andGreenwich, Connecticut,

which is the hedge fundcapital of the world.

So we believe that God is doing this.

He's stirring up the hearts of people

who just wanna see His glory.

And we believe that it'sstarting in Bridgeport

but it's not gonna end in Bridgeport.

It's gonna go all up anddown I-95 North and South.

It's gonna go to the north to Maine

and to Massachusetts, it's gonna continue

into New York and we just believe

that God wants to demonstrate His glory

in New England 'cause everybody says

this is the graveyard forpreachers and churches.

And we wanna see a different report

concerning our city and our region.

So we're excited.

- I believe with you inthat vision, in Jesus name.

Well, Pastor Dexter Upshaw

of New Vision International Ministries,

thank you for sharing today,

really appreciate whatyou're doing up there

and how you're yielding to God.

- Thank you so much for theopportunity to speak on CBN.