Smokescreens

I opened Trousdale penitentiary in Hartsville, Tennessee. I was one of the first inmates there, and I had seen violence. I had seen stuff that will give you nightmares for the rest of your life, but I had entered into a different kind of darkness at Hardeman County this time. I sat around for two or three days in disbelief in this prison, saying, “God, why did You send me back here?” I knew I needed to go through some more stuff, but why? Three days I sat around asking God why, in disbelief. Still praying and believing, but on the third day it hit me. The Holy Spirit said, “Look around. What do you mean, ‘Why did I send you here?’ What should you be doing right now?” And I instantly got up and began to evangelize in that pod. I instantly started to share my faith. I looked around and I hollered really loud, “Prayer call!” The entire pod went quiet and looked at me like I had just said something foreign or illegal or against the rules. It was insane. I could feel every eye in that pod on me. But a couple people walked up to me and said, “Did you say prayer call?” I said, “Yeah man, I'm a man of God, bro. I used to be a gangster, man, but God changed my life. God sent me back to this prison for a reason. I know what the reason is now - I'm supposed to start evangelizing this prison.”

They wasn't letting us go to church or nothing in K-Pod. Honest to God, it was a scary pod to be in. There were some throwed off people. They’d get in the shower and stay for seven or eight hours. Run around the pod naked or jump around like wild animals. The ones who are really mentally messed up in the head - they've been through so much violent stuff, some of them, that they can no longer have a normal conversation. There's just a lot of damage inside of their brain and their heart and their spirit. Some people were acting throwed off, but you know the ones who aren't acting. Every day, all day, they're acting completely insane, screaming and hollering. People running around the pod for six, seven, or eight hours a day, all day long, from the time the doors open until they lock at night for final count. Or going all day fighting, cussing themselves, cussing other people, going crazy in prison, and it becomes so normal to everybody that they just ignore it. It’s as if it's not happening no more. I was watching people be beat every day, cutting their wrists, hanging themselves. People getting tortured. I'm talking about people getting stabbed on the rock, out in the day room. People were out all day and all night.

The doors were rigged where they could be opened any time. You didn't see a guard but once every two or three hours. They would come in and see stuff happening and ignore it; not say nothing about it. It always smelled like drugs; people smoking weed or cigarettes out in the day room, getting high, falling down the stairs. It was nothing to walk out and somebody was bleeding, leaking, or their faces were swelled up. I've never been to a prison where so many people walked around with broken noses, black eyes, beaten, battered half to death. I'm talking, it was mostly white guys. The guards would laugh at them and make fun of them, and the other inmates would, too. It was just the most ungodly, immoral stuff I've ever seen.

I began to do what God had called me to do. I began to preach and teach, evangelize, and pray with people. Each day, as I began to do this, more and more people would come to me. That's how I began evangelizing in prison. I just stopped asking God, “Why?” and I started listening to Him. When God told me I went, and I done it. While I was being faithful to Him, God was giving me revelations in this prison. He was showing me that when I got out, I would do things because of Him that I normally wouldn't be able to do. He was giving me visions about being pardoned by the governor, going to jail and juveniles, possibly back in prisons, and preaching. He was giving me visions about doing the kind of ministry that I'm doing right now.
I didn't know I would be doing it in such a radical way, living on the streets for a week at a time, sleeping in a tent, a sleeping bag, sleeping out of an old church van. I didn't know that I would be doing it like this, but God was giving me glimpses of things that I am now doing, things that only He Himself can open the door for me to do. That's what I was doing.

Eventually, it's like God began to bless the things that I – and the other believers - was doing in Hardeman County. We started being able to go to church here and there, because we were filing grievances and paperwork on this. We were writing the wardens and pushing for church services. Why would you not want God in a prison to where there is no God at all? If you're trying to get this prison where it needs to be, then you need to have church services, because Jesus is the only answer. All through this prison there were people just like me who were standing up and being bold. Some of them were ex-gang members that had walked away, just like myself. God was protecting each and every one of us – seriously! We were no longer affiliated with a gang, so our only real protection was God.