There is a dead space of time between the Super Bowl and Spring Training baseball where there isn’t a whole lot of sports on TV. I know, I know, there is the NBA, NHL, and NCAA basketball but those sports really don’t get exciting until their playoffs and tournaments start up.
Something I look forward to that breaks up the lack of sports is the Daytona 500. For one day, and one day only, I look forward to the fans, pit crews, announcers, and drivers obsessed with the strategy of going fast and turning left. I enjoy the funny commercials, I enjoy the former racers commentating on the race. For this one day I am totally immersed into the drama of when to stop for gas or tires. I enjoy the tension between teams, and crashes…glorious crashes!
Shortly after the winning car does his final burnout in the infield grass, I am checking to see when the first baseball spring training game starts up later in the week and I am done with NASCAR for another year.
Indiana has their share of auto racing history, and I often think of that when we travel there. For several of us this was also our first Saints experience of 2022. After a long winter and even longer spring and early summer, quite a few of us had yet to have made a Saints prison visit.
The Illinois part of the team left Peoria, IL before 6 am last Wednesday and began our trip to the Indianapolis airport to meet the rest of the team. We had one other guy drive in from Wisconsin but everyone flew in from New Jersey and Georgia. We made a stop at the Champaign, IL Chick-fil-A for breakfast.
We had one young man on our trip who was making his first trip. Luke Freeze grew up as a missionary kid and spent most of his childhood in Cambodia. I had the privilege of being Luke’s Youth Group leader whenever his family was home on furlough. I had been prepping Luke for this trip for a few weeks but we used that Chick-fil-A breakfast to explain some of the finer points of the ministry.
We got back on the road and eventually met up with our teammates from Georgia and New Jersey at the Indianapolis airport. Our first prison of the trip, Plainfield CF was scheduled shortly after everyone landed but fortunately, it was nearby the airport.
We arrived at the facility and had a short wait before taking the field. We won our first game of the trip and had a ton of fun with the inmate team. Between games, Rodney Stewart shared his testimony. It was nice to hear Rodney’s story about how God impacted his life and worked through bad situations. It is always good to hear Rodney’s voice and I have appreciated the impact he has had in my life while serving with him. After Rodney was done, Jim Jefferson shared the Gospel. JJ was on the very first trip I took with the Saints back in 2011 is one of my oldest friends in the ministry. JJ is such a good speaker and does such a good job of interacting with the men on the yard. It had been a few years since I had the chance to minister with him and it was a blessing to hear him share the Gospel.
We won the second game and once again had a lot of fun with the team and the crowd.
Overall on the day we handed out 50 Gospels of John and had 9 men indicate that they trusted in Jesus Christ for their salvation.
After the prison, we drove to our hotel and unpacked. After getting cleaned up, we went to Bub’s Burgers & Ice Cream. Bub’s is known for their “Big Ugly Burger” Challenge and has been featured on Man vs Food. We had a long table and we had a lot of fun laughing and catching up. We are obviously there for prison ministry but I do appreciate how God sometimes provides pockets of time where we can often have an impromptu men’s retreat.
God is good and it was a blessing to serve Him in a prison in Plainfield, Indiana!
