More than 400 people gathered in the Suffolk National Guard Armory Thursday morning to join their voices in prayer and hear testimony about the work of God in their lives.

Those attending the 27th annual Suffolk Leadership Prayer Breakfast heard moving accounts from two people who came to America for a fresh start and ended up finding a beloved new home and a spiritual connection with Jesus Christ that they had lacked in their countries of birth.

The local breakfast is part of the National Prayer Breakfast Movement, and it combined prayer for individuals, families, communities, the city, the state, the nation and the world with uplifting speeches and scripture readings.

“Prayer moves God’s hands,” said Justin Caplan, a branch manager for Wells Fargo Mortgage. “I don’t understand it, but I know it works.”

Caplan and his family came to America for a fresh start after his father’s financial empire in the United Kingdom collapsed. They are Jewish, but his parents soon found someone here who led them to a saving relationship with Jesus. Caplan soon found Christ himself, and since that time the whole family has converted to Christianity.

Lisa M. Olson, director of career services and quality management for the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, told her own story of being rescued by a Christian doctor in her native India when she was just a baby.

Born without arms or legs, she had been abandoned by her parents, and the Indian doctor in charge at the hospital had suggested that she should be euthanized. The Christian doctor intervened and made sure she was taken care of.

Eventually, she was adopted and brought to America, where she found Christ and learned through physical therapy to have a high level of independence.

She reminded those attending the event that God has given them the means to keep their spirits up in the midst of the most trying circumstances. Quoting 2 Timothy 1:7, she said, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the keynote speaker for the event, reminded attendees that the nation’s connection to God goes back to its beginning and is evidenced in its founding documents.

“Our leaders have finished best when they started on their knees before God,” he said.