Newsletter September 2009

Bill Glass Weekend of Champions

We sat on the concrete floor on opposite sides of the steel door to her solitary confinement cell at Miami Women’s Detention Center. She was an older lady whose face was twisted in distress as I began talking about how much God loved her. At first she stared at the ground and was unresponsive. But as she listened to the Bible verses, she made eye contact and talked more. Finally, when she prayed to ask Jesus into her life, her face relaxed so that she looked years younger. The sparkle in her eyes showed that she now had hope.

This encounter was a great way to finish an exhausting weekend doing prison ministry with Bill Glass Champions for Life. The ‘teammates’ (participants in the outreach) had orientation on Thursday night where they learned how to share the gospel with inmates and were divided into teams to reach the many jails and correctional facilities in southern Florida. Tanya Crevier, one of the platform speakers, demonstrated the basketball handling skills she would use to gain the interest of the prisoners.

Friday morning I drove to the Homestead Correctional Institution for women in long-term confinement. It is rainy season in Florida now, but God took care of the problem. The early morning showers cleared up as our team went through security. The weather was hot and sunny as we gathered with the inmates on the baseball field surrounded by barbed wire. A singer on our team got their attention, then Sandy Fatow spoke about her life with drugs and losers before Jesus changed her life. When we got in small groups to share Bible verses about how to trust in Jesus, all the ladies in my group had done so at previous Bill Glass events, so we discussed how they could be sure of their salvation and live in a manner pleasing to God.

When we went to lunch, it started raining again, but cleared up when we went out to the field that afternoon --- then started raining when we left! We drove up to Wayside Baptist Church in south Miami where all the teams met for dinner and shared about how we had seen God work in the lives of the inmates that day.

Saturday morning I went up to the Miami Women’s Detention Center for short-term detainees. The tall, ugly, concrete building had no outdoor facilities, so we sub-divided up into groups to reach all the floors. Three of us went to the lockdown floor which had the psych ward and the solitary confinement cells for disciplinary problems. Two of the ladies I spoke to under these conditions made decisions to trust in Jesus! (Including the one above) So I went home, tired but happy.

Matthew 25:36b "I was in prison and you came to visit me."