TESTIMONY IN SUPPORT OF CHAPEL OF HOPE
By Bonnie Drew, a parent of an inmate 11-15-2007
I would like to tell you what a blessing the Chapel of Hope at Hughes Unit in Gatesville has been to my son who has been an inmate there for 7 years now. As a parent, seeing your son arrested and sent to prison is the one of the most heart-rending, devastating catastrophes that can possibly be imagined. One day you are having Thanksgiving dinner with the family, thanking God for the blessing of having your son home for the holidays. Then suddenly on Monday morning you pick up the phone and hear the unbelievable words, “Mom, I’m in jail.” It has now been 9 years that my husband and I have watched our son walk the lonely path of incarceration.
For the first few years, it felt like we were watching our son slowly sink into quicksand, ever sinking deeper into despair and bitterness. If seemed like we were watching him gradually suffocate to death as the harsh life of prison took its toll on him – mentally, physically, and spiritually.
When Jon was transferred to Hughes Unit in Gatesville, he had truly hit bottom. He needed strength and he needed hope. The only place in that prison unit that offered any possibility of finding strength and hope was in the chapel where he could hear the Word of God. As a teenager, he had turned his back on the church, but now in his darkest hour, church was where he wanted to be. The first thing he did that week was request permission to attend chapel. And I am so thankful that God placed that chapel in the center of the Hughes Unit prison compound so that our son could find the Lord again.
For the first few years Jon was at Hughes, he was like a lot of new Christians. He was up some days and down some days. And sometimes he was down for weeks and months. At times, I would see the burden of pain lift from his eyes, but it always seemed to return. Sometimes he would get discouraged and stop attending chapel for a while, but something kept drawing him back.
Then a little over 3 years ago, I saw a complete change in Jon. The pain and anger left his face, and he became so hungry for the Word of God that he would read his Bible for hours. A few months later, I received a large envelope from him in the mail one afternoon. When I opened it, tears of joy streamed down my cheeks. It was his baptismal certificate. I knew that he would never take the step of baptism unless he had truly made a 100% commitment to follow the Lord.
Just a few months before that, I had been talking to the Lord about what a failure I was as a parent. I had a successful career and had traveled all over the world. But in my eyes, I had failed at the most important thing in life, which was to transfer my faith in God to my son. And I cried to the Lord with sorrow that day, asking him to forgive me for my shortcomings as a parent. But I didn’t know how much God was doing in my son’s life right at that very moment. So the day I received Jon’s baptism certificate in the mail was like getting a special letter from the Lord, telling me that God was there all along and He had indeed answered our greatest prayers.
From that point, Jon applied to Moody Bible Institute to take correspondence courses and began to work on a degree in Bible. Then he was chosen to be part of the ministry team in the chapel and began to lead Bible studies and prayer groups, even at times preaching in the prison rec yard.
Today he serves as chairman of the deacons in the Chapel of Hope at Hughes Unit. We often pray together about the church there and the many needs. My husband and I thank God daily that our son has had the opportunity to come to truly know the Lord and live for the Lord through the chapel ministry at Hughes Unit. Jon says in his written testimony that if he had not been incarcerated, he would never have stopped and been still long enough to listen to God.
That’s why we believe that the Chapel of Hope ministry is so vitally important. When a person enters prison, they enter a place where they are nothing but a number and a white uniform. But worse than that, they are condemned to an existence as an outcast who is considered unfit to live in society. There is a wall that closes down around them, and everywhere they look they are reminded that they are a sinner, unclean, unfit, and unwanted by the world.
It is so very precious to me to read the words of Jesus in Luke 4, when He stood in the synagogue and proclaimed: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Looking at these verses, I see words that perfectly describe someone in prison: poor, brokenhearted, blind, oppressed, and captive. But Jesus came to preach, to heal, to bring recovery, and to proclaim liberty. That was his mission on earth and it is the mission He has given us as the body of Christ. This is why it is imperative for there to be chapels on prison units where people who are brokenhearted can come and find healing for their souls.
But even in Jesus’ day, the “good” people had a hard time understanding this. In Matthew 9, we read about Jesus eating with people who were outcasts of the day – tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees saw it and asked, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard that, he answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick…..For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
People in prison know they are sinners and outcasts. But they also need to know that Jesus came to save sinners. That’s why we need chapels in prisons. In John 4:35, Jesus said, “Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” When you walk into a visitation room or a chapel service in a Texas prison what do you see?? You see hundreds of inmates, all dressed the same, all in white uniforms. Surely these “fields” are WHITE unto harvest. And surely we must go to them and make a way for them to hear the Gospel.
I have heard that in many prison units where there is not a chapel, hundreds of inmates are turned away from church services on Sundays because there is not enough room to seat them in the limited facilities made available by the prison. We’ve got church buildings sitting all over the US that are half full because people are too busy to go to church. But in the prisons, the fields are white unto harvest. They want to go to church and there is not enough room.
Matthew 9 gives an account of Jesus traveling from city to city and village to village teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel and healing the sick. People flocked to him. Verse 36 says that “when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
Why do we need chapels in Texas state prisons? Because there are multitudes of weary people there, scattered and lost like sheep without a shepherd. The harvest is plentiful. We need church buildings where the gospel is preached, the brokenhearted are healed, and captives are set free from sin — and no matter what happens to them, whether they ever walk out of the prison walls or not, they will be able to say to each other, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” That’s why we need to build more Chapels of Hope in Texas prisons.
Bonnie Dew
