(I wish this blog had the beautiful pictures I have in my head of our time at the MolePolole prison…but unfortunately I couldn’t take a phone in there and then apparently when you take a picture of the “visiting hours” sign outside, it’s normal for the guard to chase your van down and watch you delete that picture. Don’t ever say I didn’t try.)
You know the quote from A League of Their Own- there’s no crying in baseball? Well, I feel like that same concept applies in prison. There’s no crying in prison!
Unless you’re me.
In Botswana.
At prison ministry at 8:30 AM.
Standing in front of about 50 men.
Crying.
Monday morning. We walk up to the gate. Guard greets, door opens, walk through. Locked behind us. A couple of handshakes from some guards, another gate, another door. Step through, locked behind us again. Prison yard, filled with men hanging out, sitting down, washing buckets, and a select few singing worship songs in the middle of the whole scene, next to a dreamy tree and an old volleyball net.
Two days this week we’ve spent with these men. Just two days, for about hour each time. This first day Ben preached about his life, and how the Lord completely turned it on its head for His Glory. Jesus brought healing to a man’s wrist, a wrist that didn’t have much motion before, and had full range of motion after the Lord touched it. I prayed over 2 murderers and 4 thieves and countless men drenched in shame. Men who had done some pretty bad things, things no one would let them forget, things they wouldn’t let themselves forget. So in the midst of my prayers, I started to pray that the spirit of shame would leave, that those men would know that no matter what they have done, and no matter what they will do, Jesus loves ‘em all the same.
I walked away from the first day of ministry with so much joy and such a heavy heart for the state of a lot of the men I had just met. This morning we went again. This time, Brother Kingsley brought the Lord’s word to the crowd, preaching on His Love, His Faithfulness, and the opportunity to embrace it. 10 men committed their lives to the Lord. I got to pray over my friend whose name means Gift and who translated for a lot of the other prisoners- he’s only been there 6 months and gets out on Friday, and I got to pray for that day to be a day when he not only walks in freedom from those gates, but that freedom in the Lord would envelope His life even more.
To add to my growing friend list (only consisting of murderers and thieves before this second prison trip), I prayed over a rapist, over liars and cheaters.
And they got to hear that they are Sons. That in Jesus, the terms used to describe them, the words used to define who they are, to define the amount of shame they are supposed to carry, would get gone and never come back.
That remorse and sorrow would come for those who had not walked through it yet.
And for those that had already? Freedom.
Because who can walk in freedom with the same chains hanging on tight? Clanking as a constant reminder of past failure?
I sure as heck can’t.
My friend Whiteman was telling me about how he used to be a cattle driver and that his wife died while he’s been in prison…a tumor that killed her within two weeks of finding it. He has three kids, being raised by his mother and his sister. And he wants them to be blessed, in spite of his own life. He wants to be a good father to them when he is released. Will you pray for him?
My friend Edison wants to be able to walk with Jesus after he leaves. He doesn’t want their relationship to end when his life returns to normal. Will you pray his life never returns to normal, even outside of those gates?
My friend Alarosha doesn’t know how to talk to God. Will you pray that the Lord starts sending him crazy people and dreams and visions, showing Al that He’s chasing after him?
Many of my friends want to be out soon. Who wouldn’t? Pray for their time there to be fruitful, to be full of growth and maturity and love for each other and Jesus.
Today, as we were finishing praying over people, this overwhelming sense of love came over me as I gazed out over the crowd of men that had almost doubled since we got there. Tears started to well up as I felt how much the Lord adored them all. I knew I needed to pray for them all before we left, and I knew that meant crying in front of aaalllll of them because the whole keeping it together concept was not a thing at the moment. So as Ben got up to close us out in prayer, I asked if I could do the honor.
We all huddled real close, and through a choked up voice, I looked into their eyes and told them that they were brave men. That they were honorable men. That they would be fathers after the heart of the Father. That they would no longer be held by shame, but that by laying themselves before Jesus, they’d be brand new, ready to walk through anything and everything with Him by their side.
Because you know what? As it turns out, calling each other by our failures very literally never got anyone anywhere.
In Romans 4 is says that we have a God who gives life to the dead, who calls things that are not as though they are. So that is what we do. We say, “You have Jesus in you and Jesus is brave. And you might not look brave right now, but I love you enough to call that out of you, to believe it and declare it and pray it over you every day–that your life would mirror His more and more because you keep being brave enough to trust the Holy Spirit in you.”
So, there was some blubbering on my part. And man, am I honored to have gotten the chance to weep over those men. If those tears exposed any of the Lord’s love for them, then Holy Spirit, let ‘em roll all day. Because Whiteman and Al and Blessing and Gift deserved to be cried over, to be loved, to be seen and heard and prayed for.
There’s no crying in baseball. But I think there’s crying in prison.
At least, today there was.
