Kylie Malia here,
How often do we forget or stereotype the people left in prison? What do you think of when you think of prison? I know for sure I went into the prison ministry with at least a little feeling of how the prisoners were to receive me and my Joshua siblings.
For some reason, I felt really heavy, a fear that my words wouldn’t matter going into it. Likewise, the men we sat and talked with were really receptive and knew a ton more about spirituality than I had originally thought of. My pod of Ruth and Zeke were in the module with just men. All of whom were mainly drug or alcohol abusers and gang affiliated.
Something to wrestle with was that these men were so excited to see us and hang out-whether they spoke english or not. The hard part was realizing why they were happy, it was because they didn’t ever get visitors. Friends and family have all shunned or disowned them. Yes they are in prison, but even I had the assumption that they would all be cruel, mean and have hardened hearts. I came to remember that they are loved and cherished creation of God, who especially just wanted to converse with people other than their cellmates.
I talked to a few men about Christianity and their beliefs and journey of reading the Bible in prison. I think I met a replica of Paul; something he said that stuck with me was, “This uniform I’m wearing doesn’t even feel like one anymore; it’s my pleasure to be here.” Then he proceeded to tell me about his calls to prayer over his cellmates and the paths he’s going to change and already working on changing after prison.
My first time going out with the purpose of evangelism was such a blast. I ended the event by going through the gospel with about 15 guys and then proceeding to pray over them. It would be true to say that I have grown a fear of my words not hitting, especially in prayer, but I felt as if I was being given the words to say. After that, I was surprised to see the prisoners overly willing to write down their names to talk to the chaplain.
I now have quite a few guys to pray for, and on the plus side, I can say I’ve been to prison.
Anyways, toodles my fellow brothers
– Kylie Malia (Current Student)
