Prisons and more impromptu speaking (Oct. 22)

While eating lunch at Enjati’s house Uncle William Moses received a call from the prison ministries coordinator asking if anyone at his house wanted to go help with the prison outreach that afternoon. Since Zach and I were the only one’s under the age of 30 there we agreed to go.

We hopped in the tiny van that the coordinator drove around in and headed to the prison. I would tell you his name but when we asked him his name he told us we couldn’t pronounce it and so we should just call him “uncle”.

Upon arriving at the prison we headed in to see the prison director who we were told was the youngest the prison had ever had. I would say he wasn’t even 30… but the prison seemed to be doing it’s job with the barbed wire and 20 foot high rock walls so hey, no worries here!

We chatted with him for a few minutes before signing in on the register and heading into the prison yard. The walls were from the original prison built by the British back in the time of British control in India. We of course had been asking about the prisoners. We wanted to know what they were in for and how long most of them had been in, etc. We were told that all types of criminals were put in the same prison here. Everything from murder and rape to theft and cheating… I’ll admit that surprised and caught me off guard since that’s not necessarily how I envisioned it being but in we went. The prison was quite nice. The prisoners bathed in the yard in showers that were nicer than the one in our room at the hospital! The prison yard was a medium sized courtyard with the cells built into the outer walls of the courtyard. There were women with babies right in the mix of the rest of the prisoners. It was all organized in a very efficient way but not anything remotely close to the prison I had envisioned in my mind.

They put out chairs for us and all the prisoners sat down on mats in front of us. I counted somewhere around 60 prisoners in total and they all seemed to be eagerly waiting what we had to talk about. The coordinator got up and began leading song service in Telugu which neither Zach nor I am proficient at… About 10 minutes after we had left the hospital the coordinator had asked me to give another impromptu talk for the inmates. Fantastic! I’m getting pretty good at the whole “make something up on the spot” thing! I’m starting to wonder why Zach never gets asked though…

The song service lasted just long enough for me to get my thoughts together and then we had a solo song by one of the inmates. The coordinator told us later that he couldn’t read or write but he loved to sing but he had to sing by himself because he basically made up the words and song as he went since he didn’t know them by heart. He sounded quite good for apparently not knowing what he was doing with the words. It was all in Telugu so Zach and I couldn’t tell the difference.

I got up and gave my talk which was strangely close to the one I gave at midweek prayer and at the churches we visited a few weeks back… It’s nice having different crowds to preach to because you can keep the same sermon!

After the sermon the prisoners wanted Zach and I to pray with them so we prayed with each one individually. It was great so pray with them.

The prisoners had to eat then and then head back to their cells so we left the prison yard and went back to the prison director’s office to have a nice cold Sprite! The prison director wanted to know all about us and why we were in India and such. It’s funny how every person asks the same 3 or 4 questions when we first meet them. “What is your name? Where are you from? Why are you here? and For how long are you here?” Without fail, these questions are asked in rapid succession here in India by almost anyone you meet.

After our chat with the prison director we headed back to the hospital to eat dinner. Then we decided to get a jump-start on laundry! It was a good Sabbath full of surprises and good experiences!