Thursday, March 26, 9AM
I got here yesterday about 5. I rode down with Jerry Mendicino who was the leader of the
last walk. We had a great ride and I was surprised at how fast it was over. I loaded in
175 dozen cookies in addition to his 700 dozen. The cookies were delivered to the prison this
morning and I heard last count was 5000 dozen! We enjoyed the Wednesday night dinner with the
folks at First Baptist Church in Kershaw, and had a wonderful lesson on Romans 9, 10, 11.
Lights out in the gym at 10PM and all was quiet except for the occasional snore. Lights
on at 5:30 this morning as we prepared for breakfast. Today we will eat lunch at the
methodist church and have our traditional dinner at Haile Gold Mine Baptist, after going
to the prison to meet the inmates. Tomorrow the work starts in earnest. The last two
weeks have been a struggle as Tiffany and I have tried to prepare our home for this
and coordinate schedules. Illness, pain, scattered minds and distractions have tried
to makle this as difficult as possible. Tiffany has been a real strength for me and
now things seem to have fallen in place.
Loading the cookies into the trailer
9:30AM
Today the prison is on lockdown. We never know when that will end. I hope this mission
can continue.
NEWS Update - 9:41 AM
The lockdown is because of a hole in the fence. They are doing prisoner counts now to
make sure there were no escapees. We likely wont get into the prison at all today.
If there's an escape we won't get in at all. We're praying...
8:45 PM
We were locked out of the prison all day today. We will have to make up the 2
hour introduction ceremony tomorrow first thing. That will make for a very long day.
We had our traditional thursday dinner at Haile Gold Mine Baptist in Kershaw.
They have taken good care of the Kairos team for a long time and we are very appreciative.
I hope we get in to KCI tomorrow.
Lunch at the Methodist Church
Friday, March 27, 10:50PM
We got in to KCI today at 6:45 AM (we didn't return until 8:45 PM!). We had an
incredible day. we started the day two or three hours behind schedule due to
yesterday's lockdown, but we included everything that was missed, didn't cut anything
short and still made our daily schedule. None of us knows how that happened, that
two hours just worked themselves out, but they did. I met an inmate whom I will
sponsor all weekend. That means that I am available to him should he need to work
anything out with our program, or if he just wants to talk. I also met my table
family today, 6 men who are inmates, Tim Moore, our table leader and Wendell Phillips,
a clergyman. We have set about trying to get the men to work as a tema and they are
repsponding beautifully. I gave a talk today about choices - that was how we started
the program off and it was well received. Lunch was chili dogs and dinner was spaghetti
with meat sauce.
Saturday, March 28, 10:00PM
We arrived at the prison at 6:45 again today and got started uneventfully. Today
was focused on forgiveness and we talked a lot about what that means as a Christian
concept. We use music extensively on Saturday and the men responded vividly! Lunch
was taco salad, dinner was barbequed chicken. We make no pretense that we try to
appeal to their hearts through their stomachs. We gave them our letters today (each
participating inmate receives a sealed handwritten letter from each volunteer), and
the men were highly emotional. Some team members left unexpectedly today and that has caused some
serious problems, but our leader has been great at overcoming obstacles.
Bags of letters
Sunday, March 29, 4:30PM
We finished the Kairos Walk today and it was incredible. Two inmates made professions of
faith and many hearts were moved. It is amazing to hear men in prison sing
'Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place". It is incredible to hear them
open up with stories that could be damaging to their reputations except that they
have come to trust each other. It is inspiring to see hard hearts cry unashamedly in
front of a room full of people. All the work to make this happen is worth it in the end.
There are more photos available on the Photos page.
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Kairos of South Carolina
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