Brooklyn Church Holds Prayer Service For Ebola Patient Dr. Craig Spencer

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A small but passionate congregation in Brooklyn gathered Sunday to ask a higher power to help fight Ebola and to heal New York's first patient with the deadly virus.

About 50 congregants from God's Miracle House of Prayer, Praise and Worship -- a small church on the third floor of a Flatbush building above a grocery store -- attended the prayer service, WCBS 880's Monica Miller reported.

None of the church's members have any relationship with Dr. Craig Spencer, who was diagnosed with Ebola in New York City last week after returning from treating patients in Guinea. They said they just wanted to gather as a community and seek a spiritual guidance to help the world find a cure for the disease.

Minister Janet Lovell said her church has a lot of passion for Spencer.

"I don't know his mother," Lovell said. "I don't know him. I don't know his family. But he is my brother."

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Church member Yvonne Massop, who has a daughter who works in the medical field, said her heart goes out to the doctor and his family.

"Pray for the people with Ebola, but especially for the ones who will render service to them," she said.

Spencer, 33, is in isolation at Bellevue Hospital Center, being treated with an experimental drug and undergoing a plasma transplant from another aid worker who contracted Ebola in West Africa but has since recovered. Health officials said Spencer has now entered a rough phase of his recovery, in which he's suffering from gastrointestinal issues.

The doctor's fiancee, Morgan Dixon, has left Bellevue and has returned to her Hamilton Heights apartment, but will remain quarantined.

The World Health Organization says more than 10,000 cases of Ebola have been detected worldwide. More than 4,900 people have died from the disease in West Africa.

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