Submitted by philip on
By Mark H. Hunter, Regional Reporter
ANGOLA – Around 200 children got to spend the day with about 100 of their incarcerated fathers during the second Awana Lifeline’s Returning Hearts event held in 2014 on July 14, (the first was in mid-May) and along with finding forgiveness and reconciliation between the children and their fathers, 40 children accepted Jesus as their personal Savior, according to prison Chaplain John Toney.
“It’s been a great day – a great success,” Toney said as activities wound down around the Louisiana State Penitentiary’s rodeo arena and the merry-go-round and ferris wheel fell silent. “I never lose the joy of watching the child connecting with their fathers.”
Mike Broyles, Awana’s executive director of the Lifeline prison program, said, “The purpose of Returning Hearts Celebration is reconciliation between an incarcerated father and a child for healing and hope and forgiveness.”
It is based on Malachi 4:6, “And he will return the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers,” a verse painted on the back of every T-shirt the children, volunteers and inmate fathers wore.
The program began at Angola ten years ago but has been so successful, 40 prisons around the nation are now doing it, Broyles, said, along with a new program for women inmates called Hannah’s Gift, written by Dr. Kristi Miller, chaplain at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. Ten Returning Hearts events will be held this year, Broyles said.
“One of the reasons this event at Angola works is because it is built on a faith model. If it were not I’m not sure it would,” said Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, Republican presidential candidate, FOX News show host and Southern Baptist pastor, who attended the event at the invitation of Warden Burl Cain. “The programs we had in Arkansas that worked, like the Interchange program where we partnered with Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship – we had a recidivism rate something like 15 percent. If you didn’t have inmates in a faith-based program, the likelihood of return was like 60 percent.
“It’s a simple matter – when you change people from the inside everything else takes care of itself,” Huckabee said. “But if you don’t do it, things don’t get better and that’s why I think faith-based programs make people accountable, not only to the police or their families, but to God.”
The men participate in a year-long “Malachi Dads” program while the children and their mothers and grandmothers also participate in a similar program in local churches. The day begins with an announcer calling the father’s name and he scrambles down from among other inmates seated in a nearby grandstand while the excited children run into their arms.
The men and children spend the day playing games, riding on rides, playing in inflatables, eating and reuniting while a volunteer, one of hundreds from all around the country, chaperones and serves them with prayer, fellowship and frosty bottles of water on a typical Louisiana summer day. Meanwhile, many of the mothers and grandmothers meet on the other side of the 18,000 acre prison complex to learn how to be more understanding and godly caregivers.
While many of the fathers witness to their unsaved children sometime during the day, this most recent event also featured strong-man Greg Mead of Total Surrender Ministries. Mead presented a salvation invitation after wowing several small crowds by bending rebar over his head, tearing a thick telephone book apart and breaking a stack of concrete slabs with his elbow. That’s where, Chaplain Toney said, the 40 children prayed for salvation.
Bob Long, a repeat volunteer and member of Grace Baptist, Baton Rouge, spent his morning inflating hundreds of balloons that were released at the end of the day.
“When I was young I used to hear the Bible verses about visiting the prisoners and that just stuck with me for years,” Long said. “After I started coming out here I got a deeper meaning from what that means. I think we’re all called to prison ministry.”
Tom Hover, pastor of Oak Grove Baptist Church in Salem Mo., helped Long inflate the balloons. He brought nine volunteers for the May event and has an Awana program in his church.
During the Hearts event in May, Hover said, he chaperoned an inmate and child who did not receive Christ but, “the man next to us led his children to Christ and he cried like a baby. It’s a blessing to see men who are here for life because of their crimes break down because of God in their life.”
The balloons are released at the end of the day to symbolize freedom, Hover said. “The greatest freedom anyone has is the freedom of forgiveness – and the second is to forgive.”
Inmate Earl Davis, 36, who portrayed John the Baptist, in the prison’s “Life of Jesus Christ” drama, was throwing a softball with his 16 year-old son from New Orleans.
“Every time he comes here I’m seeing more and more positive things in him,” Davis said. “I have a great dad – I love my dad!” the son added.
Cain stressed to a group of local and national reporters that “this is not about the inmates – it’s about the children.”
“These children of inmates are seven times more apt to commit a crime than other children when they grow up,” Cain said. “These inmates don’t want them to follow them in their tracks to prison.”
Cain also put the situation into another context, “many families who have someone serving their country can relate to.
“If you go to Iraq as a soldier you can still be a mentor to your children from Iraq,” Cain said. “If you are in prison you can still be a mentor to your son and daughter.
“We can’t help the victims that brought him here but we’re trying to prevent new victims,” Cain said. “That’s what it’s all about – it’s not to reward the inmates – we want to change the child.”