Newsletter November 2008

Weekend of Champions
Prison Ministry in Miami, FL

On October 24 and 25 Dr. Marlene Groomes (the faculty sponsor for our Campus Crusade for Christ outreach at Miami-Dade College) and I participated in a Bill Glass Weekend of Champions (WOC) Prison Outreach in Miami. This time we went with a group to two institutions that never had a WOC before (other groups went to correctional units that had participated previously). We still don’t have the statistics for the whole event, but here is a summary of what Marlene and I did.

Friday morning, October 24, I picked up Flo and went to Marlene’s home. Flo knew I was picking up a rider, but didn’t know whom. Flo was greatly surprised to learn that I was picking up Marlene: they went to the same church! We went to a detention unit near downtown for men and women, called Turner - Guilford – Knight Corrections Center.

On arrival we went through processing and divided up among the various units on the 4 floors. There were 7 ladies on our team, and I was the only one who had participated in a WOC before. The other ladies were a bit frightened. That feeling quickly disappeared. Through the efforts of a good chaplain, our unit already had a mini-revival going – 16 of the 52 ladies on the unit were in a Bible study. Now more were going to join.

In the morning, I spoke with 5 inmates and all 5 made decisions for Christ. During our discussions, one inmate, “Grace” said she knew she was going to hell. She said she had prayed to receive Christ when young but then got involved with drugs and other stuff; she didn’t think God would forgive her now. As she heard that God really loved her and would forgive her if she returned to him, you could see the lights in her eyes come on. She finally had hope and gladly rededicated her life to Christ. Our group then read Bible verses and discussed how to have assurance of salvation and live the Christian life in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the afternoon, another lady, “Mercy”, was obviously mentally distressed. She was fidgeting, wringing her hands, her face looked crooked, distracted, and in distress. At first she even had trouble talking. But I carefully went through our pamphlet and we discussed what it meant. Then she prayed to ask Jesus to come into her life. Then I started to explain how the Holy Spirit could help in her life. After a while I noticed that her face had evened out, became calm, focused, and she was talking normally. She seemed totally transformed. Later I spoke with Marlene and she had noticed the difference from across the room! You could really SEE God working in her life! Due to logistical problems, we only had one speaker come into our unit, but that gave us more time to chat and answer questions.

Statistics at Turner-Guilford-Knight Corrections Center – about 1400 prisoners (men and women); 374 indicated decisions.

Saturday, October 25, our group went to the Women’s Detention Center in downtown Miami. Again we divided up the teammates according to floors and units.

For our group, about 80 women crammed into small lunch room. Everyone had to shout to be heard, so I ended up a little hoarse. The experience this day was very different. While we were waiting for a speaker, one of the inmates got up and sang gospel songs. Then we had 4 different speakers! It was really too much as we didn’t have much time to discuss our materials with the ladies. In my group of inmates, all 7 prayed to receive Christ, but I ran out of time to get their names.

Statistics at the Women’s Detention Center – about 350-400 women prisoners; 74 decisions.

Praise the Lord for this wonderful opportunity and the souls added to His Kingdom during this weekend!