Prison Report

Prison Report

The Park Prison Ministry

Update for November 15, 2021, We have made a lot of progress in the last few months.

• We have over 700 students, and over 600 are active.  We keep those released in our database so we can know if they return, only one student has returned.
• In the month of October, we mailed out 440 lessons, a new record.  Our volunteer home graders are doing a fantastic job, with Jake Schweikhard being our grader of the month, as he grades many lessons for us and is always uplifting to our students.  We also were blessed to add Fran and Rochelle to our list of volunteers!  Praise God!
• We are adding new students weekly, with a new record set.  Two of our ladies at Mabel Bassett CC sent us 37 referrals for new students in less than one week! 
• In the past we have mailed out only ½ a course per month which resulted in a high drop-off rate, so in January we began returning lessons as quickly as possible which resulted in fewer dropouts, a higher number of referrals, and of course, higher costs.
• In March Jody decided to start challenging the students for referrals with a great success rate.
• Jody also developed two new courses for correspondence and has had great success with them. We have revived many inactive students with these courses and received numerous letters from inmates telling her how much they loved the courses, and how it has helped and inspired them.
  • Forgiveness
  • How well do you know God?
• The problem with higher success rates, means higher postage cost. So, in October we decided instead of just ½ a course we would mail complete courses. This will save on postage and increase participation.  One reason we think this may happen is due to the work of the men at DCCC.  One inmate Andrew Williams (who has earned 2 Doctorate degrees in Bible Studies while incarcerated) handles the NLB for us with a group of men at DCCC who all want complete courses and they have been successful in completing these courses in a timely manner.
• In October, 2 more men at DCCC received their bachelor’s degrees in Bible Studies: Dewey Katakea (American Indian) and Gary Cooper.
• Andrew Williams has been a great help to me at DCCC, and I am sure will become a great Christian leader when released.
• All of the chapel workers have received their bachelor’s degrees and Reggie Wilson, whom The Park sponsored for obtaining his masters degree, is about to complete his studies and should graduate in the next few months.  I will keep you posted on that.
• I still teach 3 Christian Apologetics Courses at DCCC on Mondays and Wednesdays. This week on Wed afternoons I will be teaching a class on the minimum side, which will be 4 classes taught each week, for a total of 20 Bible classes a month.
• I also preach one sermon a month on Sunday morning on the medium side.  Jim Pinkston and I each preach two sermons a month on Tuesday and Sunday nights, for a total of 5 sermons a month.
• Ray Vaughn also works with the Sheriffs dept as a volunteer Chaplain and performs death notices, crime scene management, rides alongside with the deputies (Which they minister to as much if not more than the inmates, and special assignments, working 8 hour shifts during the Tulsa Fair.
• Jail visitation is still locked down. The Jail volunteers were allowed back in for only about 4 weeks this spring.

I have reached out to Danielle Shrock concerning The Angel Tree Project for the children of inmates and she is making progress in that area.  I also mentioned to her the need to teach Christian Apologetics to the children, starting at an early age so they are well equipped to defend their faith on the school yard and classroom.  She informed me she was already looking into that.  We are blessed to have her looking over the education of our children.

• I talked to Kevin Peters and Tim Maynard concerning a Prison Outreach program to help us have contact with the prisoners’ families who live in the Tulsa area.  If we can take care of the families, showing love to them, the prisoners will respond in a positive way.  My hope is we can get the families to study the same New Life Behavior courses with their spouses who are incarcerated. Kevin is working on this, attempting to find someone who can oversee the project.  I am not allowed to have contact with the families of inmates because I go inside, one of the rules for volunteers.
• I also talked to Ken and Kevin about having a couple of our young preachers obtain a badge for prison visitation, hoping we could encourage them to start preaching on the inside.  I feel this would give them an opportunity to use their preaching skills more often, and help us bring young people into the ministry to follow up behind us for when the time comes, we must step down.
  
  
• The following is a list of our Volunteers
• Elaine Russell                   [email protected]
• JakeSchweikhard              [email protected]
• RayVaughn                       [email protected]
• SuzanneVaughn                [email protected]
• WaymonHunnicutt           [email protected]
• DianeHunnicutt                [email protected]
• LindaBrown                      [email protected]
• MikeHawkins                    [email protected]
• TeresaHawkins                  [email protected]
• DaveHuey                         [email protected]
• PattiHuey                          [email protected]
• CarolynKusler                   [email protected]
• JanetSwopes        
• MikeWilliams                    [email protected]
• BunnyWilliams                 [email protected]
• FranciscoDevilla               [email protected]
• Fran Thomas                     [email protected]
• RochelleEpperson [email protected]
• BillyMize  [email protected]
• Lesley Mize          [email protected]
• Jim Pinkston         [email protected]
• Jean Pinkston        No Email Address

If I have left anyone out, I apologize… just let me know and I will be sure to add you to our list.

Just in case this is not enough information visit our website at

https://theparkprisonministry.org/

 June 15: 2021 We are continuing to see growth in our correspondence courses in the prison ministry.  We are holding the students accountable for lessons sent to them and sending notices when they become inactive. Our volunteers for home grading increased by 3, so we now have 9 great home graders.  Our Tuesday night graders are usually less than that and with the Tulsa County Jail reopening for Bible lessons on Tuesday night only, we will lose Jim Pinkston, Elaine Russell and Teresa Hawkins on our Tuesday night grading.  Ray Vaughn will also be going to Tulsa County to teach.  He and his wife, Suzanne, are two of our top home graders, along with Waymon and Diane Hunnicutt, Linda Brown and Jake Schweikhard. On the bright side, this past Tuesday night we were blessed to have Mike and Bunny Williams come to help us, with him on a walker, which brought our number of graders to 6.  The lessons being returned to the students is slowing down due to the small group of graders coming on Tuesday nights, and the time it takes for home graders to pick up their lessons, take them home to grade, then return them. This does seem to reduce the enthusiasm and dedication of our students to these studies.  We may need to replace our Tuesday night grading with something different that will attract more volunteers. We are so proud of our ladies at EWCC in Taft for their fantastic participation rate of 23%, over 200 active students, with the prison’s capacity of 900. On the other hand, we have only 18 students at MBCC which houses 1,200 ladies, and this is a maximum-security prison for more serious offenders.  We are sending our students there a challenge to spread the Good News and increase their numbers. We have updated our database to reflect only our active students, and we are not adding all the new students to the database until they have successfully completed lessons.  This is helping us to focus on those who are serious about their Bible studies. We have just sent out a new challenge to our active students in the male facilities, as ALL 15 prisons where we now have students have participation rates of LESS than 1%.  This is not acceptable. I, Jim Carmichael, am  now conducting classes on Monday and Wednesday of each week at DCCC.   We are studying Bible prophecies and how they contribute to Christian Apologetics. I also preach at DCCC on the  1^st and 3^rd Tuesdays of the month while Jim P is teaching lessons at the Tulsa County Jail every Tuesday night.  I preach on the minimum security side every  4^th Sunday night, and Jim P preaches  on the 1^st Sunday night of the month.  We have also scheduled two baptisms at DCCC on Sunday morning, June 27, on the medium side of DCCC.  We have made some progress there, as Brad, the Chaplain who is off work due to illness, required all baptisms to be done by him. As a volunteer Chaplain filling in for Brad, I  have been able to schedule a few Sunday morning sermons, and this service for the baptisms.  We are hoping we will have more than the two men. Jody recently wrote two new courses for the students (Forgiveness and How well do you know God?), which have been well received.  Several inactive students have responded to her Forgiveness course. Francisco has a couple of Hispanic Correspondence students but recently discovered the Hispanics in the prison at Sayre OK were being attacked if caught reading or even carrying a Bible. One of the men (Caucasian) at Dick Connors was also physically attacked by another inmate as he was reading the Bible.  However, apparently this was simply a personal attack on him, not because of his faith, as in the case with the Hispanics at Sayre.  I share this simply to point out how Christianity is under attack, and it is especially evident in the prison system. At one time the men received “Days Off” their sentence if they completed Christian courses, but no longer… the point being it might force others to take Christian courses in order to get the days off… even though other courses that are non-Christian still offer “Days Off” for their participation. Pat and Stan M.  (an elderly couple from another congregation) are teaching one of these other courses which gives days off, but they told me they “sneak in” Christian training with the courses… a modern version of “God’s Smuggler” I suppose. I hope you will keep Pat & Stan in your prayers, along with the prisoners, their families, and the employees of the prison (one of the guards was attacked last week, and I understand it was somewhat severe). We are so thankful to all who contribute to this ministry with their time and money!