Prison Support for Sanders Estes Unit in Texas - Promise Keepers
by: Bill Curry
Bill Curry supports the growth of inmates at Sanders Estes Unit in Venus Texas. Following is a report that Bill wrote to several prayer supporters. Bob Reccord contiually supports promise keepers and prisoners at Sanders Estes. Please post a comment if you have a story about prisoners and prayer.
We started with the Iron man video, it is the one of the father and son who did the Iron Man competition in Hawaii, a marathon, 100 mile bike ride and 10 mile swim in the ocean. The only difference is that the father pushed, swam and rode with his handicapped son. I have seen that DVD a bunch of times and am always moved by it, but this time the Mountain Cedar was heavy in the room, Murphy says men don’t get emotional to the point of tears and that it is the Mountain Cedar that affects your eyes. This time it hit me like a ton of bricks, I was the handicapped guy in that raft being pulled or in the wheel chair being pushed or in the special seat on the front of the bike being pedaled by a daddy who saw beyond all my imperfections and handicaps, one who, as Bob Reccord would say in the next video, knows me by name and still makes the sacrifices necessary to let me win the race. I shared that with the guys that, that guy was us. When the lights came on apparently the Mountain Cedar had affected many.
We moved from that to the Venus video that was shot during the event that PK and the CMA hooked up on in August, it was probably the 1st time they had ever seen what the facility looked like from the outside. Bob Reccord and James Ryle nailed some hearts in their brief spots. Bob shared how God knew each of their names and that they mattered to Him and that nothing that they had ever or would ever do could change how much He loves, cares for and has plans for them. James shared how that there was someone there that mattered so much to God that He brought this team together to come there just for that one man. This was one of those minutes that you just let the Spirit work.
I shared some of James’ testimony about how when he was incarcerated it was in a prison that his father had built when he was incarcerated. This is when things got a little quiet until one by one several shared their thoughts. The first shared that he hadn’t been even close to the kind of father that he should have been and his children had paid the price, in a choked up moment he did say that the story gave him hope. We shared that there was no hopeless situation and no lost cause children in God’s family. One man shared how he had not even seen some of his kids, he had been down while they grew up, but it was his bad choices that got him there and that he could relate to Promise # 2 about developing relationships with other men and how his cellie, who was there was his calming affect when his anger raged and he saw the need for those relationships.
If there was a show stopper it was when one man shared how he hadn’t been there for his sons and hadn’t provided the kind of father figure for them and then told us that one of his sons was serving time right there in Venus and was in another pod and only could see him at chapel. He was encouraged though because another asked him this week if that young man was his son and he said that he was and was told that he had a good kid for a son. I can’t imagine having come to prison to find my son but in reflection many of us are in our own prisons we just don’t have bars. The son was supposed to be there last night and would be the next week.
The next thing that I will share is not in any way about us but all about the faithfulness of God to use nobodies to minister to anybody and I share it because it took my breath away and left me almost speechless in a cloud of mountain cedar. A man who has been in a couple of our classes addressed the group and said that he wanted to share a verse with them, it was from 2 Chronicles 16:9
“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”
He went on to say that when the Lord looked across the earth He see those kind of hearts in us and that we were righteous, godly men and that he, this man, appreciated all that we had done to minister to him. It seemed that thank you was such a woefully lacking reply but it was the only one I could muster and I dared not say much more lest the mountain cedar attack me. In 10 years of this, this and maybe only a couple other times have I experienced such a blessing, it was enough to keep me at it for another 10 years.
We capped the night off with our usual closing prayer but as we were leaving a man approached and said that this was the 1st year that he and his father will have been to PK, him in Venus and his father in Arizona this coming weekend. Well I have rambled too long but this kind of captures what we experienced last evening.