I love being in prison. Of course, I go with the understanding that I will be walking out the door and returning to my family at the end of the day.
Kairos Prison Ministry captivated my attention several years ago when I first heard about it during my own Walk to Emmaus. God laid this ministry on my heart then and fuels the passion I have for it now. Historically, I have served Kairos at a women's pre-release facility in Columbus. However, the state saw it fit to shuffle the deck, and our ladies were relocated ~ some of them back to Marysville, most of them to Dayton. Unfortunately, Kairos was not at that time approved to work within Dayton Correctional.
I was not intimately knowledgable about the proceedings of cutting through the necessary red tape in order for Kairos to get into DCI, but I do know that it took the better part of a year. A year of not being able to serve the ministry or see our ladies was heartbreaking. Elated was I to be asked to serve on the very first Kairos DCI team!
Yet, I must confess, the wind was taken out of my sails just a smidgen when I was asked to serve for the second time in a row a position in which I had asked God to mercifully never place me. He has such a sense of humor. For the second team in a row, I had the honor of serving as the Cookie Monster, a.k.a. Cookie Coordinator. But hey, I thought, if this is where God wants me to serve, this is where I will serve.
Cookies are an important part of the Kairos experience ~ a never ending supply of cookies serves as a visual reminder of Christ's never ending love. Not only is there a bottomless plate of cookies sitting on the tables where these ladies spend most of their day, but participants are given cookies at the end of each of the 4 days to take back to the compound to share, and the community on the compound receives cookies as well. So cookies are everywhere, and if you are the Cookie Monster, by the time the weekend reaches its close, you never want to see another cookie again as long as you live.
When the numbers were worked, our team needed to collect 1100 DOZEN chocolate chip cookies. This is HALF of what we ordinarily need. Until recently, Kairos handed out 2 dozen cookies to each participant each day and to every resident on the compound once. Now, at the request of the prison, we only hand out 1. And I and my Cookie Team were responsible for counting every one of those cookies.
I have served Kairos twice before, and all 3 weekends I have served in a leadership position. When I tell veteran Kairos volunteers that my first weekend ever I served as Inside Food Coordinator they are usually surprised that I have opted to return. They are even more surprised when they hear that I had no team assistants. I had 2 resident Angles, inmates who have already been through Kairos and return to help facilitate, but no teammates assigned to help me because our team was so small. The last time I served as Cookie Coordinator was the same scenario ~ 2 Angles, no teammate assistants. And we made it work. This team I actually had assistants!! And I confessed to them at the get-go that I was not used to this and was unsure how to function with this much help, so they would probably have to remind me now and then that I needed to let them serve, too.
As the weekend drew closer, Satan reared his ugly, horned head, and team members across the board ran into snags and obstacles. We knew we were onto something to get him so riled. We met with the first of many collective obstacles the day we were scheduled to have our security training inside the prison and meet with our Angles. The Chaplain had called off unexpectedly, and our visit was cancelled at the last minute. We prayed right there in the prison parking lot for the Chaplain and his circumstances, and that Kairos would still be allowed to continue the following weekend without all of our team being security trained.
We serve an awesome God. We were given the green-light, and 4 days later I was headed back to Dayton, cookies loaded in the trunk, for Kairos DCI 1.
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