WS Chronicle

Residents of all ages, ethnic backgrounds, races, and cultures came together in prayer earlier this week during Come Alive Winston-Salem, a community prayer breakfast held at the Benton Convention Center on Tuesday, May 1. 

The annual event hosted by the YMCA of Northwest North Carolina, Love Out Loud, and the New Canaan Society was first held in 2012 as a way to bring the community together. Since then the event has grown in attendance every year, and this year was no different. Nearly 1,000 people attended.

To jumpstart the event, members of Infusion Worship serenaded the crowd through song, while attendees enjoyed breakfast. Following the welcome from Michael Baugham from the New Canaan Society, prayer was led by Ashley Granados, Bruce Boyer and Carmina Eder.

The keynote address was delivered by Cynthia Garrett, creator, executive producer, and host of The London Sessions w/Cynthia Garrett, currently airing on TBN Worldwide. She also recently released her first book, “Prodigal Daughter: A Journey Home To Identity.” During her address Garrett, a graduate of USC Law School, with a certificate in comparative law from Oxford University, discussed her faith and the struggle with her identity in Christ. She said, “Sometimes in our mess we find the glory of the Lord in ways that are incredible.”

Garrett went on to explain how she found God while in a prison cell in Italy. She said after being held for three days in isolation, after her then husband was arrested for drug trafficking, she sat down and started reading. Although she went to Catholic schools her entire life, she had never really sat down and read the Bible. 

She said,  “The three months I spent in prison and the two years I spent in Italy fighting for my ability to come home, reading the Word of God was the most incredible thing I had experienced in life.”

In closing, Garrett encouraged the crowd to never be a victim because it will diminish the greatness of who you are. She said, “If you say you have faith, then you have to know there is nothing that diminishes you except the stop signs you put in front of you.

“I feel that my voice exists just to remind people that we are not victims,” she continued. “… Each of us has a testimony, a testimony about what God has done in our lives and if we share it, I believe that we can begin to empower people in a real way.”