Monday, June 11, 2007

Long live the amish

I want to share about my kids and about a crazy Prison experience
My Kids-
My kids crack me up on a regular basis. This week my kids were waiting for Jill to come home and they were getting antsy. I was just messing with them so I asked "What does mommy look like? Maybe she is already here." Ellyse (my daughter) looks at me and says "Mommy looks like us except with Annie hair." (She is a big fan of the Annie movie)
The other night after being in bed for about an hour Ayden (my youngest son) comes down stairs sleepily and asks "Is it morning yet?"
How can one not have humor when you have kids in your life.

My strange/bizzare prison experience-
I had an opportunity to help in Prison this week with a group called Christmas behind bars and their ministry was to give inmates food and gifts. The group who I helped out with was a very diverse group. Amoung the group was some sort of televangelist, his television crew, and disciples. Then there was also an Amish group. The goal as I understood them were the was to give the inmates these gifts in the shortest amount of time possible. They were told they were not to preach at them or spend time in long indepth conversations because of time constraints. The first cell house we go in the televangelist gets at the bottom of the tiers and starts preaching, ranting, and raving. His television crew was there to video tape his every word and step. While he was doing his self promotion. The amish were carrying large bags of food up the tiers of prisoners in 90 degree heat. It was just a strange situation passing out food in a max security prison with a bunch of amish.
There were a couple of other moments that really stuck in my mind from that day: One was- the televangelist was walking through the prison and the television crew was riding in laundry carts with a foam/fluffy microphone over his head and his followers were affirming his every word as he was ranting about all the problems with society. Seeing the way he totally disrespected the whole prison system, the guards, and the chaplains really rubbed me the wrong way.
The there was the amish who didn't say much but were willing to do whatever it took to make sure the job was done. They were a joy to work with and watch work. We were pushing laundry carts full of food to one of the cell houses and I was pushing one cart and this amish chap named Jonny was pushing another. I realized half way to the destination that he was racing me. So of course I tried speeding up. (What chance does a middle age fat man have against anyone who is of the amish work ethic). After Jonny passed me he looks over and says "that is what I call road rage." I never thought I would ever hear an Amish use the word road rage.
It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this group had on both the prisoners and the prison system (guards, administration etc.) I was impacted by both the televangelist and the amish, and there was one that I would love to be like and there was one that totally disgusted me.

1 comment:

stiverdomeeast said...

That is great stuff Ben.

It's almost too crazy to be true.