Thoughts from Prison
So, I visited Centinela Prison last weekend with the Faith Community Prison Ministry team. It was a bittersweet trip, as I had been hoping to attend a reunion in the mountains that weekend with a bunch of old friends from the Jesus Movement. But then I realized I had a scheduling conflict. I had to go with my first commitment. It's a three-hour drive from Ontario to the depths of the Imperial Valley (depths, literally—it's 50 feet below sea level). From the bleak, dry squalor of the lower desert I could look up directly to the west and see the verdant 6,000-foot peaks of the Laguna Mountains, where the reunion was happening. Oh well. As it turned out, the prisoners turned the tables on us. We went there to minister, and we did: Janetta shared her incredible testimony of how God enabled her to get a kidney transplant against all odds. And Javier talked about his former life as an inmate, gang member and addict—and how God delivered him. And of course, there was music. ...