A Win Win Situation

   In a couple of days from now, our Kairos team will enter Ware State Prison for the 38th time. I have served on several of these teams, and, by this time, I pretty well know the program. There will be several talks, some meditations, some chapel programs, some discussions, some posters and plenty of food.

   One of the big incentives for the inmates to request an invitation to attend is the food. The food in the mess hall is edible, and it will keep you from starving to death, but is not what you would call gourmet by any stretch. The whole prison system is run on a pretty strict budget and food is one place they can scrimp.

   When I first served on a team at Ware, we ate in the mess hall with the participants, eating prison food and trying our best not to offend those men who had to eat there every day. We had lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and dinner on Friday and Saturday. These days, we cook for the men on the outside and bring it in. The system has cut out the Friday,  Saturday and Sunday noon meal for all their inmates and ordinarily they are down to two meals on those 3 weekend days.

   So the food is a big part of what brings some to the program. Now, there are men who sign up to come that are truly seeking something spiritual, and there are men who are already Christian who come for the fellowship with men from the outside, but there are some who will tell you that they came for the food.

   When they say that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach, they are talking Kairos. Regardless of the main reason they showed up on a Thursday night, the food they receive for the soul is the one thing that causes a change in their lives.

   On Sunday night, several of the men will tell the group that they came for the cookies (and other stuff) but what they found was much more filling. Their lives have been impacted by all the love shown by the men from the outside which is really just an outpouring of God's love as given by ordinary men.

   I have been honored to have been used in this way, It is a service that I like to do, and the changes seen in the faces of the inmates, is worth any amount of food.

   Plus we don't have to eat that stuff that we can't recognize in the chow hall.

   A definite win win situation.

   Food for thought and food for the soul.