All of the good things that we did on this trip could be written down and in a blog or email like this, and, after a few hundred words, you would read about all of the good and bad things that we did as a team. Actually you could take the 31 years that the Saints Prison Ministry has been around and probably fill a few books full of inspirational and infamous stories of prison visits. The last verse in the book of John (21:25) says, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written”
While we had our team devotions and while we were in the vans, we stressed as a team that there really isn’t anything we did this week. Sure, we made some sacrifices like missing work and traveling across the country but once again, there wasn’t anything that we did to change the hearts of the men we visited. We were careful to reminded each other, “Look at what God is doing!”
On Friday, we visited FCI Tucson. This place has a wacky softball field and a team that was really wanting to beat the Saints. We lost two close games to the inmate teams. It’s not the outcome that we wanted, but the FCI Tucson team enjoyed the victories!
In between games, longtime missionary athlete, Butch Smith shared his testimony. Butch’s story is a good one about how he came to know Jesus in the middle of his life, after a rough childhood. After Butch, Kirk Smith shared the Gospel. Kirk is naturally funny and really cares about the men in the prisons. Kirk shared the Gospel from the book of John. He starts his message with his version of John 1:1, “In the big inning was the Word…” This really makes the men laugh and helps Kirk engage with them. He also shares the last verse in John and reminds them of all the great things Jesus did. He tells them, “This is the God that I serve!”
After we left FCI Tucson we enjoyed a Taco Bell/Subway meal. This was a fun time to sit down and enjoy a meal with guys that I don’t normally get to enjoy a meal with. When we were done eating, we went back to the USP where the correctional officers were holding a closest to the pin golf ball driving ball fundraiser. Missionary Athlete, Warren Miller, participated and drove several golf balls close to the pin!
We traveled back to the the complex and visited the Tucson Federal Prison Camp. We won our game rather easily. Tim Travis shared his testimony. Tim’s story was about running from God as a young man before returning back to Him later in life. Ben Morrow shared the Gospel afterwards. Ben is my teammate here in Illinois and has grown so much over the years. I met Ben at the Turkey Bowl flag football tournament that I used to coordinate at my church. Ben shared the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32. This story really resonated with the men at the camp and I have seen this message be really meaningful to inmates over the years.
Between both facilities, we handed out close to 200 Gospels and saw 17 indicate that Jesus was now the Lord of their life!
