prisoners asking for prayer like pigeons after seed!

A few years ago, before we were Officers, Tracey came home from the Salvation meeting one evening with Ricky in tow. Ricky was a drug addict with nowhere to sleep and so Tracey had invited him to stay with us! Ricky was with us for 5 days until we were able to find him more suitable accommodation.

A couple of years later Ricky rang me from prison and I arranged to go and visit him. During the visit (with the able support of Neil Webb) I prayed for Ricky had a really powerful encounter with God the Holy Spirit.

Once again we lost contact with Ricky and the last I heard was that he had settled down, come of the drugs and linked up with a local church… that was until last week when I had a call from Haris, TSA’s chaplain at Brixton Prison in South London. Ricky was back inside and was asking after me and Tracey – so this morning I went to pay him a visit. He was looking well and I accepted his story that things had been going well for him, he was still off the drugs and voluntarily reducing his dosage of methadone. I also accepted that this short stay in prison was the results of one of the many muddles that Ricky seems to get himself into – ignoring letters, missing appointments, being in the wrong place at the wrong time etc.

We had a good chat and I prayed with Ricky and you could see that lovely Holy Spirit glow come across his face once more. I’m going back to see him again in two weeks.

But that is only a bit of what I want to blog about.

What was absolutely amazing and completely took me by surprise was how many of the men on his wing saw my uniform and immediately wanted me to pray with them. They were hovering like anxious soldiers at the end of the Sunday morning meeting desperate to catch the Officer’s ear. In addition to Ricky I prayed for two other men – including a Muslim who wanted to know if Jesus could rescue him from heroin.

The only experience I can liken what happened to, was standing in Trafalgar Square as a young boy with bird seed in both hands and suddenly finding myself swamped by pigeons! This was the same experience, the uniform seemed to convince these men that I had the seed and they flocked around hoping to get some.

It was a tremendously humbling, moving and empowering experience and one that I will never forget.

The fields are still very much white unto harvest we just have to visit the right ones!