Personally, I had a notion that prison ministry was something to be done, just once a year . To be honest, I never thought much about that group of our community ever.
Though only until recently .
My phone rang on a hot June weekday. Seeing the number, I happily picked the call thinking of making a small happy chat and then ending the conversation. But the voice was different on the other end. I enquired who was speaking and I realized another person was on the line. And when I enquired about where the owner of the number was, I was informed, he was taken by the police. “What, are you talking about Mr… ? When did this happen, what was the reason, where is he now?” were the only questions that raised through my mind.
I rushed my bike and reached the police station that was mentioned. But there I was informed that Mr… had been moved to the Central Jail. It immediately struck me that if a person is moved here, it is very long before he can come out. I frantically called his family and could only hear their cries, nothing else. Somehow we made arrangements to go and meet him in the Central Jail. We showed our IDs, proved our addresses and everything else. It was an hour before we reached the counter where we would get our passes. The man punched in every detail, which took another 10 minutes and then shouted. Someone has already visited him today (his son had) and it will be seven days before any other person could meet him! Seven days of loneliness, of fear, of no information, all by himself!
Seven days was too long, but this time we were there on time, took shorter time for us and we finally were let in to meet my friend. His name was hailed, and it was another ten minutes before he finally appeared in a totally different shape! I could hardly look at him through the bars and the net. And even then I did not know whether to cry or touch him to speak comfort to him. Moments became minutes and finally I asked him an age old question, “How are you?” and his was a standard soft reply, “I’m fine”
As he began to narrate what all he was going through, my heart really began to twist and I wanted to throw up. And my tears that day were not so much for him, but for the neglect of prisoners in general. I prayed, Lord give us a chance to come and minister life to them, just to come and sing to them or to let them know that they had people besides the police and the advocates who knew them and cared for them.
That is when I was surprised that both in the Old and in the New, the prisoners were not forgotten by their Master. Our Lord went to the extent of asking his followers to go and minister to them by just visiting them! What a job.
We have begun the work. We were able to send in an entire team that did skits, joked around with them, sang and shared the good news. In the end, we were able to give out New Testaments too.
The greatest need is good literature in Hindi to be distributed to them. Please pray and help us to bring the Good News to them in a manner that is relevant to them.
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