“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”
-Hebrews 13:3
“You girls are so quiet. Is everything okay?” Bledy asked as we stood outside the gates of the Juvenile Correctional Facility that we would soon be inside. We all nodded and let out an unconvincing “yes”, but kept our eyes glued to the building in front of us, like our stares were the only things keeping the bricks of the building in place. Since we got off the bus, all talking was kept to a minimum, I don’t think any of us were afraid per say, but more just overtaken by the fact that we had no idea what to expect. My mind raced with possible scenarios like bad thriller movies, all of which (thank God) turned out to be embarrassingly overdramatized. Once we were let through the front gates, Bledy led us to the screening area where we all received complementary pat downs. After that, there was only one more iron door separating us from the inside of the facility, it swung open slowly, and as it did any preconceived ideas of what I thought would be on the other side melted away. We walked into a large white room with a staircase that led up to a balcony overlooking the space, sunlight poured in through large windows, dust danced in the sunbeams like snow. The thing that surprised me most was the amount of art on the walls, every free, eyelevel space on the white walls held artwork that had been done by the boys living here, mostly landscapes, but there were some portraits too.
When I told friends, family members, and squad mates that part of our team’s ministry in Albania would include prison ministry, it raised a few eyebrows, and for a long time I too wondered what would be waiting for us on the other side of the barbed wire and wrought iron. I know what I did not expect, I did not expect the boys I met in the juvenile prison to tug on my heartstrings the way they did, but when I sat down in the library where the Bible study would be held and looked at the faces in front of me something inside me broke.
Of the ten or so boys in the room with us that day, none of them could have been over 15 or 16 years old, my little brother is 16 years old. My eyes glazed over quickly when I thought about my brother sitting across from me. These boys, they were people’s brothers and sons too. I thought about how much my little brother drives me crazy, but how much I love him despite that; I wondered whether these boys had older sisters to love them too. It became my mission in that two minutes it took them to break my heart to be an older sister to them, or at least try to share some of that love with them in the short time we would spend together.
The day after, we visited the men’s prison with our host, Erion, who is the Chaplin there. As we played card games with them, mostly Old Maid and B.S. (which they are surprisingly bad at), I saw the same thing in the men that I’d seen in the boys the day before, good hearts that had given into bad choices, but not bad people. On the car ride back, Erion said something that stuck in my mind, in the weeks, months, or years that these men spend confined to their cells, he may be the only glimpse of Jesus they get, that’s what drives him to be a light in an otherwise dark and cold place. Now, not only did I want to show love to these boys and men, I was determined to share the love of Christ with them.
Two trips to each of the prisons later, I was sitting in the kitchen at the church, when Erion walked in. He looked at me and said, “You, my friend, have been breaking the law.” I laughed because I had no other response to that sort of accusation. It turns out that I was never granted the permission necessary to enter the prisons. I had some how managed to slip past security without them noticing (possibly because I also didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be there), but nonetheless, I was sneaking into prisons, which didn’t seem that bad, I mean I wasn’t sneaking out. I haven’t been back to the prisons since.
I struggled a lot with that in the following weeks. Out of all of the ministries we are involved in here, I felt as though I had been specifically called to prison ministry. I got excited when I saw the barbed wire and guards, I knew there were people in there that needed to hear that they were forgiven and loved. I still am not sure why it played out the way it did, why am I stuck on the outside of the prisons when I want to be inside? Maybe God used the short time I did spend in the prison to show me just how quickly He can work inside of me, how quickly He can break my heart to make room for something I didn’t have room for before. Or maybe He did it to show me that it’s not just the one’s that are confined to a cell that are struggling with feeling trapped. Maybe it’s all that and more, probably.
So now I just pray over my team as they go to the prisons. I pray that they too feel a tug on their hearts to love on the boys and men that need to see the love of Christ from sisters who believe in them and their good hearts, who understand what it’s like to make bad choices, but also what it’s like to be forgiven. I pray over the ones who may be leaving the prisons soon, that they are able to accept forgiveness for themselves and receive it from the families that they return to, I pray that they have family to return to. Finally, I pray that God affects me in every aspect of ministry that I’m involved in the way He affected me in the prison that first day, that I am granted access to be a witness to the one’s that are trapped in the prisons that I can’t see.
