There are more fun things to do besides waking up at 3:00 am, but that was the wakeup call that most of our team had Saturday morning. Thankfully I had everything set out the night before, so I could just put contact lenses in and walk out the door! We were all sluggish when we arrived, but one of our guys pointed out what 3:00 am looked like when he was younger. Before he was saved, he used to come home from partying at 3:00 am but now he’s up and serving the Lord instead. God is good.
We met early and loaded up to head to Southwestern Illinois Correctional Center in East St. Louis. We arrived right at 7:45 am and, after a brief security check in, we were on the field ready for our first game of the day! We won the first game and then broke for our ministry time. Jesse Miller shared his testimony of how he came to know Jesus as his Savior and how that has impacted his life. I shared the Gospel with the men. I preached from Matthew 26 and recounted the passage about how Jesus plead with God to let there be another way. This passage shows how seriously God takes sin but it also shows us that God loves us so much that He made a way for us to have a relationship with Him by sending His Son to take our punishment. Overall, we handed out around 30 Gospels in the morning session and we saw 5 men make decisions to follow Christ. We played and won another game before breaking for lunch.
During lunch, our team went to the local Chick fil A. This is pretty insignificant, but since the Georgia team always gets to go to Chick fil A, I’ve always wanted to take our team there too! We enjoyed a few moments of fellowship and eating a really good lunch (the alternative was mystery prison food by ourselves!)
When we came back, it was starting to rain. When it began to lightning, we had to move indoors. Since we had a slight delay, we were invited to see the service dog training program that the prison had. Several of the dogs, like Yadi, were named after St. Louis Cardinals players (insert animal abuse joke here!). We got to see the dogs in action and pet them. We also got to meet several inmates that cared for the dogs that lived in the dorm there. I’ve seen this program before in a few other prisons and it is a great outlet for the men there to spend their time.
After that, we returned to the prison gym and played wiffle ball with the men. We lost the wiffle ball game in the last inning. After the game Drew Aberle shared his testimony of how he came to know the Lord after several years of living for himself. Robert Cook shared the Gospel. Rob preached from John 15:13 which says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”. Rob hammered home how much God loves them and what a sacrifice He made for them.
Overall on the day, we handed out 45 Gospels and saw 7 men accept Christ as their Savior.
Our next visit is less than three weeks away. We have the closest thing to a home game that we get! We will be traveling to Canton, IL (30 minutes away) to visit Illinois River Correctional Center. That is one of our most favorite places, and we are really looking forward to returning.
Thank you for your continued support this year and for all the encouragement that I receive from my support team!
