Prison. I Don’t Know What I Saw.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and the team piles into our 13 passenger bus that has been converted into an 18 passenger bus by the addition of a bench and some stools. After a very bumpy ride we pull up to the prison. Being here is an answer to prayer. As I shared in a previous blog we weren’t sure if we would be able to get access to any of the prisons in the area for ministry. This one is in a small village, at least a 30 minute drive from where we are staying.

 

We go out of the bus and left our bags, phones, and valuables with our driver, Bart, a sweet and hilarious man who has stolen all of our hearts and is basically our Togolese dad.

 

Before we went inside a female guard gave us each a quick [but intimate] pat down to make sure we weren’t hiding anything in our dresses. Once in the prison we circled up to pray and then half of the group (TK) went to the men’s side of the prison, while my team was ushered into a small concrete enclosure where the women were. There were only about 10 of them, plus a child who couldn’t have been older than two.

 

Our usual translator had gone with TK, and there was a woman we had only just met who would be translating for us. However as Liv began sharing her testimony, it became apparent that either our American accents were too thick, or this woman simply didn’t have as much practice in translating English. As Liv shared, I sat praying for the Lord to transcend language barriers and speak to these women.

 

We had actually had the opportunity of going to another prison the previous week to share with the women there. We had shared a testimony and then I had followed it with the gospel. Not knowing where these people were coming from and how much they had heard about Jesus or Christianity I decided to go back to the basics. The bones. The only thing that really matters.

 

I talked about the fall and about God’s love and desire for us to be reconciled to him. I shared that Jesus lived a perfect life and died a perfect death for us, and that when we accept his sacrifice we are covered in his blood and washed clean. I shared that when God looks at us he sees his perfect son. All of our faults and failures have been done away with. They are gone. I shared Jesus’ victory over death, and that he goes to prepare a place for us.

 

I hadn’t fully thought out the structure of what I was going to say, just that I needed to share the truth of the gospel. As I spoke the words came effortlessly. I looked at the faces of the women I was speaking to, and saw that many of them were in tears. There were “Amen’s” and “Hallelujahs.” I told them that they are my sisters, and that I look forward to eating with them at the Lord’s table.

 

The plan at this second prison visit was pretty much the same. Testimony, and then I was sharing the gospel. But as I sat there, listening as Liv carefully repeated herself, miming things and trying to get her message across to the translator, I realized that all my years of public speaking, any eloquence I normally rely on to convey the power of my message, none of it would do me any good here. I had to rely completely on the Lord, and on the power of the story itself.

 

When it was my turn to speak, I struggled through. I suppose I should say we struggled through. The translator asking me to repeat, listening hard to what I was trying to say. I phrased things and rephrased things, using gestures to try and convey the words I was saying. The previous week I thought that I had shared just the bones, the basics of the gospel. But as I spoke I realized I needed to seriously pair down everything I had been planning to say.

 

I probably ended up with only a handful of sentences, which somehow still seemed to take a good 15 minutes to get across. All the while I prayed that these women would hear what they needed to hear. I knew that the God who divided one language into hundreds at the tower of babble could easily speak through me in whatever way he wanted. Maybe what the Lord wanted to say was even a mistranslation of what I was trying to say. If he had wanted me to suddenly be speaking French or Ewe, it would have happened.

 

After I was finished I said that if any of them had questions or wanted us to pray with them we would be happy to.

 

This is the part of the story that I don’t know how well I know.

I was there, sure, but I don’t know what happened.

 

The translator told me that one of the women would like us to pray with her for faith. I think and I tried to ask, but I think this was a prayer for salvation and that the translator said something about accepting Christ.

 

So we prayed with her and as I prayed I covered all the bases. I crafted a prayer that would be relevant whether she was accepting Christ for the first time or whether she was a child of God but was in a season of darkness and doubt. I prayed that Jesus would be Lord and Savior of her life, that the Holy Spirit would come and fill her, that she would receive an increase of faith, and probably half a dozen other things. I prayed that from this point out her life would never be the same.

 

After we had prayed she stood up (she had knelt for us to lay hands and pray) and was talking to the other women and the translator. Another person who had come with us and spoke a little English started telling me what she was saying.

 

There were a lot of things he was trying to say, but the one thing I actually was able to understand was that she had been very sick and as soon as she accepted Christ, she was healed.

He moved his arms to mimic her and I looked back and sure enough she was jumping up and down with a big smile on her face.

 

I tried to ask and clarify, “did this happen today? Just now when we prayed for her?”

 

I didn’t know whether she was miming out a past healing, or whether she was trying out freshly healed muscles and joints for the first time.

 

He seemed to say that yes, it did.

 

I don’t know what I saw.

But either

a.) this woman received Christ and was immediately healed after we preached the gospel and prayed for her.

Or,

b.) this woman received Christ and was immediately healed at an earlier date and then received prayer and encouragement from us in a time when she needed it.

 

In both of these potential realities, the Lord is glorified. I have heard stories of people immediately being healed after receiving Jesus, but I have never met someone who that has happened to, let alone seen it with my own eyes.

 

What we are doing on the race is not about how many people are saved or healed when we preach to them or pray for them. It’s about the work that God is doing. It’s about his love poured out on the nations. This woman’s story is beautiful no matter how large or small our role in it was.

 

I don’t know what I saw, but it was beautiful.

 

Much Love,

Hattie