TO CONTINUE ABOUT THE JAIL VISITS EACH WEEK...... We meet for prayer together in the entrance room when we arrive - after getting our official badges to wear for our visit. Men and women form a circle together and we give requests and someone prays. We also get frisked at that point. At first they went over us with a very careful search, but now that we are known, they just do a cursory search. You cannot have a pen which clicks in and out because the prisoners get hold of those and make weapons, so you have to have a straight pen. We can take in our Bibles and a note pad and can get permission to take in songsheets, helpful literature, etc.
A man officer leads the men down the long halls and a women officer leads the women and those guards stay with us in the pods while we are visiting. We are not supposed to make any noise in the halls, no talking, etc. We have a few guards who know us well and they seem to enjoy being with us for our services and visiting with the girls. First Alliance has more workers than any other church. We have a couple very nice Assemblies women also. The Jehovah Witnesses used to come each week and were very disturbing. They kept themselves apart and taught their doctine loudly to a couple of girls. But lately - especially after one girl left their class and joined us - those women do not come. A couple men also go in and they confuse the prisoners with their teaching. So we are always glad when none of their people come.
The guard opens the door of the pod where we visit and calls out "church!" and the girls put up what they are doing and appear out of their cells. There are two rows of cells in one pod, upstairs and down. The girls are very affectionate and all hug and kiss us and then start talking indiviually. They give us any in-prison news they have. And we give them a bit of news of the outside - the cells are totally sealed from the outisde, so they have no idea of what the weather is like or anything going on out in the community. They spend their days sleeping or playing cards or other games or fixing each other's hair or just chatting. Sometimes arguments break out and that causes problems for them with the guards. They can be put in solitary if they cause a serious problem.
After everyone spends a little time chatting, someone gathers us together in a circle around the pod, and we start to sing. The girls also have prayer needs. We have prayed for salvation with a number of women. Some give testimonies, some want to talk personally with one of us or present a serious personal need to the group and we gather around and pray. Last week one girl who had been let out - and had even attended church with us at our church - was contacted after a couple of days and told they had made a mistake and she was brought back in after being free two days. She was so angry, and asked us to pray for her to be delivered of her terrible anger. Last week just as we were about to begin our little service, a guard came in and called out for three girls to return to prison - after they thought they were going to be released. They had to run and pack up quickly - they own almost nothing, but have to strip their beds and bundle up their mattress and follow the guard. Everyone was hugging and crying and it started off our time together on a bad note. All the girls were crying! One was a girl very close to me.
During our meeting, we do not have a speaker per se - although one week they had asked Valerie and me to dress in our national dress and speak about missions. But we all give Scriptural advice and whatever we feel led to give to the girls. We stop and pray with individuals for special needs. It is a very informal situation. We sing quite a bit also. Then we go into groups usually one visitor per table and spend time answering spiritual questions and listeing to them. The backgrounds some of these people have is unbelievable. Just yesterday Dad had a seventeen year old boy who came from a terrible home situaion - his thirteen year old sister is several months pg with HIS child. He has just so many problems and the only bright spot is when he sees Dad to talk with him. The men also go on Thursday evening and have a more formal meeting when they have preaching.
Just want to copy here something someone just wrote to Dad:
"Well, I just need to write to someone. I'm really depressed, the jail has charged me with some damage I did not do plus my girlfriend with whom I have two baby girls told me she was moving on. She wasn't waiting on me. With all this I'm depressed. I've been praying and reading my Bible. I hope things get better. I am going to prison and all (as opposed to jail) but I'm afraid I will never get out....I'm hurting deep inside. You know how physical pain is, well spiritual pain is much worse. It never goes away. I'd trade a broken arm right now for a little peace in my heart. I'm not a bad person, I just had a drug problem and that made me bad. My heart is so broke I pray it gets better soon. You help a lot. You really have made my faith stronger. I thought no one cares, but Jesus cares whether anyone else does or not and I hope he makes me feel better about life. Right now I don't like it!
Somewhere it says life is full of troubles but to put your trust in God. I believe that. I need some prayers though. I'm losing it, I'm about to snap but that will be more trouible for me. The thing is now that my girls are gone I'm starting to not care. I'm ready to give up, my spirit is so weak right now. Pray for me please, I need it. Well, with love I'm going to try and go to sleep."
As I have said before, this is a heavy ministry as well as being an opportunity to help some people who would never get help elsewhere.
The men stay longer in their Wednesday morning time than we women do, and often we women will go downtown and have coffee together and share prayer needs and have fun and plan for a future when there might be a halfway house within reach here to help some of these poor souls when they get out. One girl I have worked with a lot is totally homeless. She has a drinking problem and so her two older children were taken from her and no relative wants to take her in. When she gets out of jail, she walks around town and looks for an empty house where she can crawl in an unlocked window or just sleep on an open back porch, trying to keep warm all night.
The Bobos were easier to work with I think! They at least have an orgnized society and they take care of their own. But in Toccoa we find many people - men and women - who have no one who cares for them. It is very sad.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
JAIL VISITATION
Jail visitation occupies a great deal of our lives - not just the visits we make there every week - Wednesday mornings for both of us - and Thursday night as well for Dad. I will share with you a little bit about the process of being in jail ministry. First of all, these are very needy people. Many of them will never hear the true gospel from anyone else. Others have been in church most of their lives but have never had a real experience with the Lord. Still others have been scorned or disappointed by the organized church and are totaly turned off to Christianity.
There are about three times as many men as women in our county jail and so our visitation is different. There are three "pods" of men and only one pod of women. So each Wednesday morning when we visit the women, we have time to talk personally with prisoners, and in the women's pod we also have a little service - singing, testimonies, words of counsel - it is different each week. Dad changes pods every twenty minutes and talks and listens to the men on Wednesdays. Then on Thursday nights he goes to preach or back up someone else who goes along to preach. The TFC students love to go with him for this.
We have to remember the rules of the jail when we go in each week. You have to have personal ID (I use my driver's license) and a simple pen, none of these which click in and out. The prisoners can use those to make weapons! You have to have a patdown, usually in the large bathroom - female guards for the women and men guards for the men. Then the first door to the cells is clicked open by the lead guard and we follow behind, being quiet in the halls. We go through four locked doors before we get to the women's pod. As we enter, the guard calls out "church" and everyone who wants to join us comes down out of their cells. One thing we have been able to do is to require that all prisoners are free to come to talk with us. It used to be that the upper tier of cells was on lockdown one day and the lower tier on lockdown the next and so on...even on our visitation days. But we asked that that be changed and they complied so now everyone is free to come to church, unless they are on lockdown for misbehviour.
Just about everyone in there comes and hugs us as they greet us and then follows a time of chatting with the girls (women). There are about twelve steel tables in a pod, with little steel stools around the tables, all stationery and VERY uncomfortable! And that is where we sit and talk. For many, it is a high point in their week. These prisoners have no contact with the outside world - they have no light from outside in their cells, there is no newspaper or TV. They do have visitation rights one day in the week when they are called out to visit through a glass with their family. There is also a row of phones where they can talk with their family, if they have the money to do so. They have no idea what the weather is like outside. They live in complete isolation. We have found that the majority of the guards are kind to the girls and many of them are even Christians. When there are no visitors, the girls either stay in their rooms or else put together puzzles on the steel tables, play cards, etc.
There is a certain camraderie that builds up among the girls, and if one girl is sick, the other girls will take care of her needs. Each cell has a toilet, one girl to a cell. They are not allowed to cover up, so wear sweaters or whatever they have which is warm when sleeping. Each one does have a pillow. The uniforms are for the most part, faded (sometimes even ragged) and very unbecoming! The girls do each other's hair to pass the time and they are required to be hygienically clean. Often girls come into jail pregnant and usually the other girls take care of these prenant girls. Several times we have been there when a girl had just lost a baby and the others all try to comfort her and take care of her in her physical pain and mental anguish. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of lesbian activity tht goes on in the cells and homoseuxality in the men's side.
Several women volunteer to be on kitchen duty and so they are dismissed early from our meeting with them. If they have personl money from their families, they are allowed to order available snacks, plus special prison Bibles for a reduced price. Many of us who are involved in jail ministry put money on the prisoners' acounts so they can buy a Bible. For a long time, we had some Jehovah's Witness women who also came in and had couple of prisoners whom they were indoctrinating. They went in with us, but stayed apart from us. One of the girls saw the light and left the JW's and after tht the JW women did not come back again, so now we are all one big group.
Our Alliance church has also been instrumental in starting a good library for these in the prison. We have given money for bookshelves and a cart to take books around to the pods. The women spend hours now reading good books of all kinds. And people in our church continue to donate good books to this cause.
Being in jail work is a whole new culture for us! Our church has more people who come for visitation than any other church in town and so there is a ccertain camraderie among those of us who go each week. Our pastor's wife is one of them. There are also some AG ladies with whom we have gotten close, and after jail time we often all go out for coffee or lunch together. More later on jail... but suffice it to say this is a whole new culture that we have entered! It is certainly a very needy world. The housekeeping lady whom you kids have provided for us came yesterday as we were on our way to the court. She hugged me and said how happy she is for people like us who care enough about those incarcerated to spend time with them. She herself was in jail because of drugs when she was younger, and she shared about how she looked forward each week to the church people coming to meet with them. She is now living a drug free life and very involved in an evangelical church. It is good to know we are making a difference in the lives of these unfortunate people! (to be continued)
There are about three times as many men as women in our county jail and so our visitation is different. There are three "pods" of men and only one pod of women. So each Wednesday morning when we visit the women, we have time to talk personally with prisoners, and in the women's pod we also have a little service - singing, testimonies, words of counsel - it is different each week. Dad changes pods every twenty minutes and talks and listens to the men on Wednesdays. Then on Thursday nights he goes to preach or back up someone else who goes along to preach. The TFC students love to go with him for this.
We have to remember the rules of the jail when we go in each week. You have to have personal ID (I use my driver's license) and a simple pen, none of these which click in and out. The prisoners can use those to make weapons! You have to have a patdown, usually in the large bathroom - female guards for the women and men guards for the men. Then the first door to the cells is clicked open by the lead guard and we follow behind, being quiet in the halls. We go through four locked doors before we get to the women's pod. As we enter, the guard calls out "church" and everyone who wants to join us comes down out of their cells. One thing we have been able to do is to require that all prisoners are free to come to talk with us. It used to be that the upper tier of cells was on lockdown one day and the lower tier on lockdown the next and so on...even on our visitation days. But we asked that that be changed and they complied so now everyone is free to come to church, unless they are on lockdown for misbehviour.
Just about everyone in there comes and hugs us as they greet us and then follows a time of chatting with the girls (women). There are about twelve steel tables in a pod, with little steel stools around the tables, all stationery and VERY uncomfortable! And that is where we sit and talk. For many, it is a high point in their week. These prisoners have no contact with the outside world - they have no light from outside in their cells, there is no newspaper or TV. They do have visitation rights one day in the week when they are called out to visit through a glass with their family. There is also a row of phones where they can talk with their family, if they have the money to do so. They have no idea what the weather is like outside. They live in complete isolation. We have found that the majority of the guards are kind to the girls and many of them are even Christians. When there are no visitors, the girls either stay in their rooms or else put together puzzles on the steel tables, play cards, etc.
There is a certain camraderie that builds up among the girls, and if one girl is sick, the other girls will take care of her needs. Each cell has a toilet, one girl to a cell. They are not allowed to cover up, so wear sweaters or whatever they have which is warm when sleeping. Each one does have a pillow. The uniforms are for the most part, faded (sometimes even ragged) and very unbecoming! The girls do each other's hair to pass the time and they are required to be hygienically clean. Often girls come into jail pregnant and usually the other girls take care of these prenant girls. Several times we have been there when a girl had just lost a baby and the others all try to comfort her and take care of her in her physical pain and mental anguish. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of lesbian activity tht goes on in the cells and homoseuxality in the men's side.
Several women volunteer to be on kitchen duty and so they are dismissed early from our meeting with them. If they have personl money from their families, they are allowed to order available snacks, plus special prison Bibles for a reduced price. Many of us who are involved in jail ministry put money on the prisoners' acounts so they can buy a Bible. For a long time, we had some Jehovah's Witness women who also came in and had couple of prisoners whom they were indoctrinating. They went in with us, but stayed apart from us. One of the girls saw the light and left the JW's and after tht the JW women did not come back again, so now we are all one big group.
Our Alliance church has also been instrumental in starting a good library for these in the prison. We have given money for bookshelves and a cart to take books around to the pods. The women spend hours now reading good books of all kinds. And people in our church continue to donate good books to this cause.
Being in jail work is a whole new culture for us! Our church has more people who come for visitation than any other church in town and so there is a ccertain camraderie among those of us who go each week. Our pastor's wife is one of them. There are also some AG ladies with whom we have gotten close, and after jail time we often all go out for coffee or lunch together. More later on jail... but suffice it to say this is a whole new culture that we have entered! It is certainly a very needy world. The housekeeping lady whom you kids have provided for us came yesterday as we were on our way to the court. She hugged me and said how happy she is for people like us who care enough about those incarcerated to spend time with them. She herself was in jail because of drugs when she was younger, and she shared about how she looked forward each week to the church people coming to meet with them. She is now living a drug free life and very involved in an evangelical church. It is good to know we are making a difference in the lives of these unfortunate people! (to be continued)
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