Boxes of Bibles...

From Mike

So, last night was a night of delivering the Word, literally. We took two boxes full of Bibles, donated by different people at Bethany and other places. When we got there, the boys were all sitting down, which is kind of unusual. Usually they are all over the place, moving, playing games, hanging out, it is drab and cold in there, but they were sitting waiting for us. A couple of them came up and shook our hands but they seemed unusually reserved. One of the guards wheeled out the Bibles on a cart, and Susie started to explain about the Bibles, about how people had just started donating them, giving money of their own. That they cared enough about them to share with them even though they had never met. Susie described and showed the Bibles and where to look to find who had signed and donated it. Each young man came up and took a Bible. When they went to sit down, they started asking questions. Who is this person, what do they look like, how old are they. Susie sat for the next 30 minutes or so and answered questions about the women and families at Bethany who had donated. Talked about the friendships and relationships that we have with them. Talked about how these people pray for the young men at Norwalk.

After that, many of them wanted to know if they were going to learn more about the people in the Bible? Some of them looked in the Maps. One young man was looking at a map from the middle East and said "we have 3 wars going on over there now."

We talked a little bit about the word of God. How it was written over a period of about 1600 years. It was written by different people including kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, and scholars. Portions of the Bible were written in the wilderness, in a dungeon(jail), in a palace, in exile, in wartime, and in peacetime. How there are over 660 prophesies that can be proven to have come true later, and none that can be proven to be false. How the Bible itself proclaims that "all scripture is inspired by God" and how "men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God".

By that time it was getting late, so we got into the prayer circle. Everyone prayed, gave thanks for the Bible, for the words of God, for the books, for Bethany or Mike and Susie's Church. They prayed for each other to have strength. Once again time flows so quickly and so much happens, but last night the young men truly received a gift from our heavenly Father.

From Susie

I had so much fun last night!  Not one of the boys had written anything in order to receive a Bible.  Didn't matter... we brought the boxes out and let them all come up and take their own.  I explained which page had the name of the person who the Bible was from, and immediately they started asking questions about each person.  They were captivated by our stories of friendship with people at church, and a little bit about each person who's name they found in their Bible.  After we had told about each "giver", the first question was, "Are we also going to learn about the people in the Bible?"  I wish we could have stayed for two more hours to get started with that!! Truly!!

The boys were delighted and they were surprised.  I saw a couple of them "polishing" the cover of the Bible with their t-shirt.  I saw many of them leafing through the pages and not paying attention to anything else around them. We heard many, many thank you's.

My favorite time with the boys is always the prayer circle.  Typically, it is a very open circle with lots of space between each boy.  They hold hands, but at a distance.  Last night, the prayer circle was TIGHT.  In fact, there were several boys who had their arms around each other's shoulders instead of holding hands.  There were many thankful prayers for the Bibles, and for those people who had provided them.  Last visit, Wade said his first three or four word prayer ... last night his words flowed freely to God.

Thank you again for providing the Bibles.  We have now delivered eighteen of them and have lots more available when we meet someone new.  There are a few more boys in our group who haven't received one yet, so we will be taking a couple with us each visit from this point forward.

We will visit a new unit - Futch - next Tuesday evening for the first time.  We request your prayers as we begin new relationships with new boys.  Our visit to Futch unit will be every other week also.

Learning to love like Jesus,

Mike and Susie