Doing Time 14

Below are Spark's notes from his time as Chaplain at the Peoria County Jail:

Illinois River Correctional Center

     For the last 5 years or so we have been going to the IRCC on the second Friday of every month to do a bible study.  It has been kind of depressing lately since we were not getting much attendance.  Several times no one showed up and most times 4 people would be the average attendance.  This Friday 25 men walked in.  Since the inmates have no way to find out who will be allowed to come to the service I asked them what made them decide to come.  They did not know why they felt like they should be there until one of the inmates said he felt that the Holy Spirit wanted him to be there that night.  Gary had the lesson on peace and one of the inmates said that he and 2 other inmates that also happened to be there had gotten into an argument earlier and he felt that he needed to ask their forgiveness and wanted to know if they could leave all their anger at the "alter".  The next thing I see is that quite a few of the inmates come up to the podium and start praying for peace and forgiveness and the worship service went to a higher level than we have ever seen in this place.  The time flew by and a guard said it was time to leave.  Can't wait for November's time.

Time also for me to update a bit on the Berean activities. On Thursday besides our normal volunteers, in the afternoon we had a sewing club come and wrap Bibles. Below are a few pictures of the morning and afternoon. Marie brought Justin in to help. Below he is unloading. Justin is amazing, he is home schooled but enjoys coming to work here he will do twice his school work on Wednesday so he can spend the day wrapping and loading Bibles for us old folks. We SO much appreciate his willingness. 

 Below Diane is looking up an address on her phone. We don't have internet at the Berean office but thankfully enough people have smart phones that when we need to look up an address or a phone number of a prison we can find it.

 Marie is loading boxes to take home. She takes sets of lessons home and in her spare time will fold and stuff them so we have a supply of ready lessons to send out. We send out 4 lessons at a time each with a postage paid business envelope. That way the prisoner doesn't have to pay any postage.

 Below are the 2 Dianes that work at this office. One is what we call a 'reader' and the other is bossy...I mean a boss.

 Below was a nice thank you note on the bottom of the study.

 Edie was the volunteer that opened this study and had to share it with the rest of us.

Diane brought in lunch today. Not shown were the home baked monster cookies she served both for the morning and the afternoon volunteers. BTW lunch was delicious.

 Some of our morning people stayed to help with the afternoon volunteers.

There were more that stayed but the last pictures taken didn't turn out. A big thank you for all the hard work. Diane has a praise story to tell. Her van was loaded down with 25 boxes of Bibles to be mailed out this sewing club wrapped and labeled. When she was getting ready to head to the post office Melanie asked her, "who is going to help unload all of this?" Diane replied, "each time I go with a big load I start praying asking God for help. So far every time I needed help someone would be there." "one time it was a man who came out to take a smoking break and another time some guys arrived and helped." She didn't know what to expect but she really needed the help, her back was hurting from lifting those 25 boxes that each weigh 32 pounds up on to the table to get them wrapped and stamped, then from there packaged them back in the boxes and carried them out to her van. Well she is praying hard, drives up to the Bartonville post office when who should get out of his truck but Jake Guerst. He was more than happy to unload then said, "I've been meaning on asking how to donate to this program!" 

God is Faithful!

Doing Time 13 UPDATE ON THE FIGHT

This is the next installment of Sparks on doing time in the Peoria County Jail:

Update on the church service fight.

     A few weeks ago as the men were walking out of the church services an inmate asked me if I remembered him.  I told him that I didn't and he reminded me that he was the one that had started the fight during church services over 4 years ago.  You could see on his face that he had peace with God so I had to ask what he was doing back in jail.  He told me that after his 4 year prison term he still had to do some time on an old case.  I finally asked him his name and found out that he has been on Rhonda's weekly prayer list for the last 4 years.

This fight was written about on Spark's notes Doing Time 7. You can check that out by clicking below.

If you would like to read his other posts on Doing Time check out these links:
Doing Time 1 click HERE
Doing Time 2 click HERE
Doing Time 3 click HERE
Doing Time 4 click HERE
Doing Time 5 click HERE
Doing Time 6 click HERE
Doing Time 7 click HERE
Doing Time 8 click HERE
Doing Time 9 click HERE
Doing Time 10 click HERE
Now for the record Spark must have skipped Doing Time 11. If you know Spark hound him to send 11 on over.

Spark's Notes Doing Time 12

Below are a few more of Spark's notes on Doing Time:
Doing Time 12: A tale of two brothers,

      Jose and Justin were regulars at the Peoria County Jail. Both had been there numerous times, always for the same offense, drunk and disorderly.  After sobering up, two of the nicest men you could know.  The jail has a policy that relatives can not be together while in custody, so I would only see one of them in the church service.  They were always friendly and well behaved.  Then Justin was arrested for murder and he wanted to talk to me.  He started crying as soon as I was in the room with him.  He told me that he had just stabbed his best friend to death and he couldn't remember why he would do that.  He said "We were at my house drinking and talking about what a waste our lives have been and I remember him telling me that he would be better off dead and that I would be doing him a favor if I killed him."   "When I woke up I had a knife in my hand, he was dead and I had stabbed him 24 times."  He was crying the whole time he was telling me this and wanted to get it off his chest.  While he was in jail, his brother Jose was arrested for the usual, and after he sobered up a bit the jail broke their rule and let the 2 brothers be together for a few minutes, knowing that Justin would be going away for a long time.  Then they released Jose with a notice to appear in court on a certain day.  Jose walked 2 blocks to the tavern, drank till about dark and stepped into the highway.  He was hit by 3 vehicles and killed.  I was called and asked to break the news to Justin.  Many tears later Justin told me that Jose had won a blue ribbon at the age of seven for singing a solo in church.  He asked if we could sing that song in the sunday service in honor of his brother.  I told him we would and we did.  The words seem to fit.

Shepherd of love

you knew I had lost my way.

Shepherd of love

you cared that I'd gone astray.

You sought and found me, placed around me,

strong arms that carried me home.

No foe can harm me, or alarm me,

never again will I roam.

     On October the 6, 2011 Justin was sentenced to 33 years with no chance of parole and must serve 100% of that time.  He will be 75 when he is released.

Donated Stamps

Eva Jean and Shirley had already arrived and were waiting by the time I got to the Berean office with the mail. Eva Jean was put to work opening mail but Shirley was given an errand to run. We were out of bottled water at the Berean office and the water here is not drinkable so Shirley was kind enough to go pick up 4 cases of water for the office. The rest of the volunteers arrived shortly and all went right to work. We had a light load of mail today, just one full box but it was easily enough to keep everyone busy for hours.

 Mark arrived with a pallet of Bibles which he, Justin, Marie, Janelle and I unloaded within minutes. It is such a blessing to work at this office. Mark is able to drive the truck right up to the door and with our human chain the unloading goes quickly. We finished up the studies before noon so had a nice leisurely lunch.

After lunch everyone left except Kathy and Dave who weren't quite done with the letters. These two put in overtime today. 

The Roanoke AC church donated around 3000 stamps this week. A BIG BIG thanks to those who gave. Shirley brought in 800 more jumbo paper clips. It is amazing how quickly we go through these clips. Most of our graders give them back but we have been running out before we can get them back. We had a good day today.

Delicious!

We were very blessed today at the Berean office. Wayne and Lukie Unsicker provided our lunch for the Thursday group of volunteers. The volunteers had to work hard first though before the treat. Those Bibles the Lighthouse kids wrapped on Tuesday were labeled and mailed out today.

We were able to get all the studies processed, the letters processed and the Bibles labeled, stamped and loaded into the car by 11:00 am giving us about 45 minutes to fold studies and fill boxes. Below are a few pictures of the day. Below Janelle is applying the address labels to each Bible.

 Diane is working on the certificates. Each week there are between 20 and 30 prisoners finishing all 50 lessons of the basic Bible study and those that finish are sent a certificate.

 Below is our delicious lunch.  As a special treat for dessert, Wayne made the pineapple upside down cake out on his grill. That was served with ice cream.

 The lunch was delicious but honestly the fellowship is even better. We sure do enjoy each others company. It is hard to get back to work after enjoying our time of breaking bread.

 Below is Mark's van which was being stuffed with Bibles. The UPS truck had just arrived to pick up the boxes of Bibles we ship out directly to chaplains in prisons and jails across the United States. 

Diane came to the post office with me to help unload the Bibles. When we finished getting the last box loaded we both gave a sigh of relief. We survived another week!

Lighthouse

Berean had special guests come today to wrap Bibles. Check out how busy these willing workers are:

It was a good thing they came, they wrapped an entire pallet of Bibles for us and we probably got requests today of most of those Bibles. On Tuesday we work on reading the letters and processing the studies. On Thursdays we mail out the Bibles. There is enough work now to probably work 3 days a week but we would need someone willing to manage the volunteers. Anyone out there want to volunteer on Wednesdays?
Below is a short video of the adult room as we were processing the studies. Not all volunteers were present during the filming.

The office was noisy today but very productive.

We finished up around 3:00 pm. Check out the studies to be mailed in the picture below.

We now have 46,330 students on the rolls. Each week around 20 to 30 finish all 50 lessons and those prisoners anxiously await their certificate.

Letters, Lots of Letters

Today we had a light mail day at Berean giving me a few extra minutes to find a few nice letters to bring home for this blog. Just click on each letter to make it large enough to read. Scroll down for the rest of the pictures.

We get hundreds of letters each week. Some are angry they are in jail, some are grateful for the gift of a Bible, some are obvious begging letters, some are touching and some are heart breaking.  We say the heart of this ministry is the letters. When our volunteers are readers they really learn what this is all about and thankfully keep coming back to help. Below are a few pictures from today's work. Marie brought Timmy and Justin in this morning just in time to help unload a pallet of Bibles.Below Timmy is getting a well deserved treat out of the fridge.

 Dan came in to repair our lesson box which collapsed over the weekend. Below Vonnie and Eva Jean are stuffing Bibles for wrapping.

 Rachel is busy reading letters.

 Edie, Roma and Anna are busy with studies.

 Below we are all busy wrapping and labeling the Bibles then stacking them in the car for mailing.

 Chuck was put to work labeling studies. 

 Diane R is amazing, we give her a job and she quietly and quickly gets it done. She is one of our multi task volunteers.

 Not quite sure what Edie and Rachel are working on but I'm sure it was something needed.

Today was a good day. We finished early enough we could relax during our lunch meal without feeling like we must scarf down the food.  A big big thank you to everyone that helps support this ministry. One of the many graders sent this today by email: THEY LOVED OUR BIBLE STUDIES and want more.....

(Can you guys really manage all this stuff??----sure hope so.)

Please send the second series of Bible Study lessons to:.. and then there were names of those who finished the first set of 50 and want to continue. Yes we can do this.