The best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had included sharing most
of the day with 3,000 Peruvian inmates.
Internet is really hard to come by here in Trujillo, Peru.
Sorry I have not been able to update more.
While I have a few precious moments, I want to share about
an opportunity I had last week to serve at a prison. Our squad was invited to
take a team of seven into a maximum security prison on the outskirts of town.
The prison’s maximum capacity is one thousand inmates. Currently, they are
housing over three thousand.
Our team spent the day singing, sharing testimony, and
preaching in various areas of the prison.
Our first stop was maximum security. They led us through the
gates and we rubbed shoulders and shook hands with murderers and rapists. We
walked into a courtyard full of inmates (with no visible guard present) and
engaged in worship. It was incredibly awesome to see God at work in that place.
Our second stop was called “The Pit” or “Punishment” and was
where the worst of the worst criminals were kept under special lock down (the
closest thing they have to solitary confinement; except, the cell was about the
size of my room growing up and it housed about twenty men). It was described to
us, by the other inmates, as “a nasty place” and there was an outside tunnel
about the size of two football fields separating the Pit from the rest of the
prison. The guys in that section are not allowed out of their cells, so we
worshipped in the hallway. I literally gave a sermon to the hallway with just a
bullhorn and a translator. The men in the cells at the opposite end of the
hallway had pieces of glass or some small reflective surface that they held out
to try to see us. Basically, I preached to a hallway full of arms holding small
pieces of glass.
Our third stop was another section of the prison, much like
the first.
Our final session was in a second floor area where security
was much more relaxed. The cells lined each side of the hallway, but there was a
broken roof with clothes hanging down, clotheslines, and even tables and
chairs. It looked more like a crowded market than a prison hall. But we pulled
up stools and worshipped with this final group.
It was a wonderful day of ministry. Probably my favorite day
on the race so far. The whole day felt like something Jesus would have done,
just sitting and talking to people. Pulling up a stool and proclaiming the
gospel to those who crowded around. It was a beautiful picture of how vast the
Kingdom of God is, some of those inmates were passionately engrossed in
worship. It was a challenging day of boldly speaking of the Christ, in whom is
true freedom and true worth. These guys were just guys; people with troubled
pasts that don not define them. Humans with emotions and longings. Children of
God seeking deep down to be united to Him.
I will never forget what God is doing in prison in Peru.
