On Beads of Prayer celebrated its fifth year of ministry – and the shipment of its 10,000th set of prayer beads to members of the military – during a recent celebration at St. Alban’s, D.C.

Didi and Bob Smith started the ministry in 2005 after helping kids from the St. Alban’s youth group string Anglican prayer beads to take with them on a summer pilgrimage to Greece.

“Other people were interested, and the bug bit,” Didi Smith said. “I started making these things and I started praying with them.”
In 2006, they set up a booth at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio. The military chaplains had a booth nearby.
“We had a chat and I said, take these beads and see what you want to do,” Smith remembers. And just like that, the couple were invited to supply the military chaplains with prayer beads.

“We are given the names of Episcopal military chaplains in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan,” she said. “Sometimes we write first, sometimes they do. We started sending the prayer beads out. But we couldn’t do it by ourselves, so we started getting partners.”

Initially daunted by the enormity of the task, Smith set out immediately to start raising money.

“I do most of it,” she said, noting that On Beads of Prayer is a registered 501(c)3. “The churches pay varying amounts. They give what they can: I get monthly, annual, semi-annual checks – whatever they want to do and however they want to do it. The fundraising is not fun – these are tough times. It’s one of these things – you have to step out on faith.”

The couple also travel around the Diocese of Washington, offering programs and workshops on prayer and the symbolism and use of prayer beads. They’ve given workshops for all ages in large churches and small, where people can practice praying in small groups.

“We kept being invited here and there,” Smith said. “Around and around the beltway we went. We started hearing from parishes all over the country which was exciting, but intimidating.”

Several hundred volunteers in the Diocese of Washington and in Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist congregations around the country are now involved, Smith said, helping to string, count and sort beads, write letters to the chaplains and more.

“We have had volunteers who are Jewish, Catholic,” Smith said. “We even had a Buddhist who did stringing.”

Parishes who pay dues receive all the supplies they need to string prayer beads for the military, Smith explained. They can string as many sets of beads – or as few – as they like. Getting together to string beads can be lots of fun, she said: “Everybody is stringing together and laughing together and having a good time together and that has been a very serendipitous outcome.”

In response to requests from the chaplains, the ministry recently expanded its scope, and now sends prayer beads to stateside chaplains with troops preparing to deploy overseas.

“In the first two months of our new program, we’ve sent out 2,000 sets of prayer beads,” Smith said. They also send wearable beads for clergy. “All the beads are blessed before they go out.”

Numerous notes, photographs and e-mail messages attest to the popularity of the prayer beads.

“You made these beautiful beads for use by the faithful in Iraq and it brings comfort to the young men and women who must travel through dangerous corridors in Baghdad, and to senior leaders who must bear the burden of making decisions that send America's sons and daughters out into the dangers of a persistently dangerous land,” wrote Lt. Col. Ira C. Houck III, an Army chaplain.

“Many are so touched that you would think of us in such a gracious way,” wrote Capt. Will Hood, a Naval Reserve chaplain.“One Sailor even told his anger management class that he uses the beads to be grounded and not curse or go crazy on folks. What a testimony to the power of prayer.”

“I gave tons of them away during my deployment in 2005/06 at Camp Liberty,” said the Rev. Stuart Kenworthy, rector of Christ, Georgetown and a former Army chaplain. As battalion chaplain, Kenworthy was responsible for 1,800 troops. “Those beads went like crazy whenever they came in. I put them out, bang, they’d go,” he said. “They were just very, very popular.”

“There are always things you can read like Bibles and devotionals,” he said, “but this is a way of manifesting, of having something physical to hold on to, or incarnating prayer.”

At each of the workshops, Smith asks the participants if they are satisfied with their prayer lives. So far, she said, only one person has said yes.

She describes a universal sense of yearning for God: “At war, we figured you feel this even more acutely.”

Learn more about prayer beads and the On Beads of Prayer ministry at http://onbeadsofprayer.org/