How it went at the jail

It's a bright new day, with a future to look forward too, when you accept Jesus as your Lord and all your sins have been forgiven. There is life instead of death ahead.

It’s a little after 3:00 now, 3:09 to be exact. I’m not moving very fast at the moment. Kind of at the shuffle mode I hit when tired and the pain level is up. Doesn’t seem like I’ve done that much but sure feel like it. Spent two hours at the jail this morning. There is only one guy left there now, the other one was released Saturday. I got his phone number from J., the prisoner who was still there. Right now R (the released one) is in Ft Stockton helping his dad with a job. This in itself is good news and an answer to prayer. Last week R expressed his anguish at not being able to help his father, who has serious health issues, along with concern regarding being able to see his children before the ex wife moved to another state. So we prayed that God would work it out. Fact is R still had something like 180 days left on his sentence so there’s no doubt in my mind that God answered the prayer. My concern is that R gets established in a church and follows through on his decision to be a Christian so I’ll give him a call.

J. and I had quite a long talk. I had asked the sheriff to go ahead and lock me in the cell block with him, instead of my talking outside through the bars. He’d checked to see if that was ok and I was allowed to do so. This was great and made it much easier to communicate. I had prepared a bible study for them and it sure helped to sit at a table and spread it out with our bibles open. J. is hungry to know about God. His upbringing involved very little contact with the catholic religion his family accepted, and most of that was during early childhood. So he really didn’t know much about God at all. He knew that he was tired of the life he’s lived and not happy with the consequences of that life, so had been seeking for answers even before I showed up. Last week I had explained the basics of why Jesus came to earth and was crucified, told J. that God loved him and that Jesus died in order to give him eternal life, that basically Jesus paid the price and did the time for every wrong thing he had ever done. The easy part is that all J. had to do was accept that gift by turning away from those wrong things and believe in Jesus, making Him Lord of his life. Both J. and R. did so last week.

I began to explain the basics to J. He had started studying his bible at the Gospel of John, where I’d suggested he start. The first verse says “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

I took J. to the first verse in Genesis and showed him that Jesus has always been, and that He was there during the creation of this world. I explained that Jesus is God and got into the mystery of the trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a hard concept for many to understand.

I also talked to J. about how he was “born again” when he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior, explaining how every bad thing he has ever done was washed clean the moment he believed and thus he was starting out life with a clean slate. But like any baby, this means I have a responsibility to care for him. I must teach J. how to walk, how to grow, and how to feed himself with the words of the bible. It is so thrilling to see how hungry he is to learn, to accept and strive for this new life he has been given. J. understands many things and the short time we had together helped him with a lot of questions he had. He desires to take this knowledge to his family now. His son had Leukemia as a child and that was cured through treatments and bone marrow transplants, but recently he became epileptic, with severe and multiple seizures. We prayed for him from the jail, prayed that God heal the boy completely in such a way that all will know it is a miracle of God. I look forward to hearing later that his son is completely free of this.

I’m walking better now and the pain level has dropped down. Need to finish working on the water system. Dug up the pipes that head to the house to put the valve in so they are exposed now, and it might drop down to below freezing tonight. Last thing I need is a main pipe to freeze and burst.