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Good News Jail & Prison Ministry chaplain Preston Davis talks with Carol Soares, associate warden at Sterling Correctional Facility, during the “Hope Beyond the Walls” banquet and auction. (Callie Jones/Journal-Advocate)
Good News Jail & Prison Ministry chaplain Preston Davis, right, talks with Craig Redd, center, and Jim Bailey, director and assistant director of A Strong Tower Ministry, an organization that helps inmates succeed after their released from prison.
STERLING — Former inmates and chaplains shared about the work going on behind the walls of Sterling Correctional Facility and beyond during Good News Jail & Prison Ministry’s “Hope Beyond the Walls,” banquet and auction on Saturday.
Among those who spoke was Carol Soares, associate warden at the prison.
“They bring a focus to inmates’ lives, when they’re ready for that focus,” she said about the chaplains.
Soares noted she’s tried providing the services of a chaplain herself a few times and it’s an extremely difficult task.
“You have to be a certain kind of person that can give that comfort and give that thoughtfulness — that their loved ones are going to a better place, or you can
Ken Marlow, left, and Dan Kafka, center, associate chaplains at Sterling Correctional Facility, talk with Good News Jail & Prison Ministry chaplain Preston Davis.
be better people, or whatever.”
Chaplain Preston Davis talked about some of the fun they have with the offenders, doing things like playing softball.
Soares pointed out the offenders don’t feel like it’s 100 percent they have to be involved in a religious program to get involved.
“You open it up to where any offender can come in and then they find themselves enjoying that and they find themselves talking to a lot of people and it piques their interest,” she said.
Several former inmates also spoke at the event including Craig Redd, director of A Strong Tower Ministry, and Jim Bailey, assistant director.
“One of the gaps is there’s a real distance between the prison itself and the community and such a different aspect out there,” Davis said. “People don’t have an idea what it’s like, because it’s not the same living in prison as it is living out in the community. So we were able to bridge this and Craig has taken the same dynamic in prison, outside.”
Right now Redd said they have three staff and about six volunteers working for the organization and about 600 men a month come through the organization, which helps inmates succeed after leaving prison.
Parole officers, halfway houses and case managers contact the organization and they help the former inmates get reconnected out in the community, find them jobs and a place to live.
“Preston, the other chaplains call us, say ‘we have a man coming out’ and what they’ve done on the inside is they have prepared that man to leave,” Redd said. “What we found, when we started this in 2007, on the inside of Sterling, was that men were leaving prison and they were not prepared to leave.”
He explained that they start meeting the inmates’ needs immediately, providing bus tokens and passes and meeting them at the bus station, taking them to their parole officer and though re-entry.
“Whatever the need is, mental health, we network throughout the community to find what they need,” Redd said.
They also offer a Thursday night refuge.
“A lot of men that come out aren’t able to go to a Sunday morning worship service, so we found them falling through the cracks, so what we do now is we provide an all-adult ex-offender worship service for them on Thursday night that has accountability built into the worship service.”
Bailey talked about how he found God while in prison. His job at Strong Tower is to take most of the intakes.
“Right from the very beginning we are just very no-nonsense. We are a Christ-centered ministry. It was Christ that put our lives back together and we believe that that is the solution,” he said. “We very much counsel the guys that come in, and the women, to know that there is no solution to the problems they face, other than Christ.”
They recently held a job fair where they had case management from different facilities and halfway houses send men to the program to go through and meet perspective employers.
“Even if they weren’t going to hire them, (the men) actually got to go through the process of filling out applications and interviewing,” Redd said. “Many of these men hadn’t interviewed in a year, a decade, two decades, some of them since the 1960s, so it was very beneficial to the employers as well as the employees.”
“We got a lot of employers on board now; we’ve got a large network of employers that are willing to hire these guys when they come out.”
Davis said this organization “brought some hope to the guys, realizing there is something besides just looking at the wall and when I do step away, there are some things that are happening, some things that I can get involved with.”
The audience also heard from associate chaplains Ken Marlow and Dan Kafka.
Kafka teaches a Truth Project class, through the Life Learning Program.
The Truth Project is a Focus on the Family program.
“You cannot help but change when you’re involved in that program, whether you are in the program, being taught, or whether you’re teaching the program. There is no way that you can go through that program and not be changed,” Kafka said.
“While we help offenders, they help us and it’s an incredible partnership.”
Marlow teaches the Crown Financial Ministries program, an eight-week course that helps offenders learn how to deal with money in God’s way.
“Everything from budgeting to financial management to planning for retirement to giving, the whole gamete of how we should look at money,” he said.
Some offenders that come to his class have dealt with this stuff before. Some are familiar with finances and have no problems with issues of budgeting but they haven’t looked at it from God’s perspective.
“I’ve had many guys tell me after the class that they had never seen any of this before,” Marlow said. “It has never dawned on some of them how to take a set amount of money and make that work the whole month. They were used to just when they needed money they somehow figured out how to get money.”
He also teaches Right Start, Right Step, a Bible-based substance abuse addiction recovery program.
“It’s a 12-step program like all the rest of them are, but it’s all about the Bible and what God has to say about the changes that need to be made in our lives,” Marlow said.
All 12 steps are taught in two weekends, so sometimes the inmates take the class more than once.
“It’s a fantastic program and it does change lives,” Marlow said.
Other former inmates, including Gene Little, Johnny Martinez, Terry Evans and Marcus Weaver, talked about the how the chaplains and programs helped them in and out of prison and the success they’ve had holding jobs, being involved in Christian organizations and re-establishing broken connections with their families.
“Without (the chaplains’ program) there are literally hundreds of men that would have no hope and leave with no hope,” Little said.
The banquet also included musical entertainment by Jim McFarland, as well as a live auction conducted by Harold Unrein, and a silent auction.
To learn more about Good News Jail & Prison Ministry visit goodnewsjail.org.
Callie Jones: (970) 526-9286; cjones@journal-advocate.com
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