In Prison Again

While I'm posting, I thought I'd mention how appreciated your prayers are for the prison ministry. I wrote about Stefanie back when she first started attending the meetings. Now it appears she may be about to get transferred to the mainland in preparation for being returned to Belgium to complete her sentence.

In the meeting this week she thanked me for coming to the prison. "You have done a good work on me," she said. "When I first started coming, I had no faith. Now I want to believe, I want to know about God." I told her that it's God who's doing the work; I'm only a vessel, an instrument, a messenger.

I hear that some (many?) pastors take Monday off, and Abbie and I can understand why. We're away from the house from 10:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night every Sunday. Bro. Jose Carlos is helping with the adult Sunday School since the first of the year, so I now usually have only three lessons to present(in three languages) instead of four lessons/sermons. But Monday morning I go to the consulate, and I get home about 2:00 p.m., in time for a bite to eat before leaving for the prison at about 3:15. I get home again about 6:00. Somewhere along about 2:30 or 2:45, something in me says, "Oh, no...almost time to leave for the prison. If I could just rest for a while." But I always leave the prison feeling stronger than when I went. I think that's what Jesus was talking about in John 4, when He was hungry and rested by the well while the disciples went for food. By the time they got back, He had been refreshed with food they didn't know about.

Pray for Stefanie and the others, that when they leave the prison, they won't leave God behind, too. For that we must trust in the One that has begun the good work in them, that He will perfect it unto the day of the Jesus Christ. (Phil. 1:6)