Transformation Within The Walls: A Tale of Hope and Redemption from Donaldson Correctional Facility

Have you ever wondered what it would take to transform a place known for violence and despair into a beacon of hope and rehabilitation? Come, journey with us into the heart of Donaldson Correctional Facility, one of Alabama's most notorious prisons, where we witness a tale of remarkable transformation through the power of faith, love, and human connection. We share intimate stories of inmates like Chris, a charismatic man striving for parole, and his close friend James, as they navigate the often treacherous path towards a second chance.

There's a promise of redemption that lies within the hallowed walls of Donaldson Correctional Facility, thanks to the relentless efforts of volunteers from the Kairos Prison Ministry, World Victory Church, and We Care Revival. These compassionate souls are not just bringing religion, but life into the prison. Discover how a pastor named Steve led a transformative 12-week class on conflict resolution, enabling prisoners to change their perspectives and gain essential life skills.

Towards the end of our journey, get ready to be moved by an extraordinary narrative of acceptance and transformation. Hear about Chris and James, affectionately known as 'Thunder and Lightning', breaking out of their comfort zones to serve each other with humility and love, sparking a flame of change that spread throughout the prison. Learn about the significant baptism controversy and hear how the teachings of Joyce Meyer influenced the prison's learning curriculum. This episode is not just about a harrowing journey through the prison system, it’s a testament to the enduring power of faith, love, and the human spirit. Tune in and be inspired by these stories of hope and transformation.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 5:03

Well, hey guys, thanks for tuning in to the Straight Out of Prison podcast. This is season two, episode two. My name is James K Jones and this is my story.

Speaker 2: 5:12

And this is Hailey Jones, and this is his story that has now become a part of my story.

Speaker 1: 5:17

So in episode nine we left off with the honor dorm. You know, I went to West Jefferson, the most violent prison in the state of Alabama. I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen. I didn't understand, I was confused, I was hurt. So I went and lived there. But all along God had a path for me and it was really to get to be a part of a miracle. And it was then and I still, looking back on that, that's still. One of the greatest miracles that I've ever seen in the prison world was what happened through the honor dorm, because it didn't. You know, people talk about prison reform. They talk about you know we're going to come in, we're going to change this, we're going to start these new programs and do prison reform, and sometimes it works. Most time it doesn't work. But this was not prison reform, this was prison transformation. This was everything changing in the worst place.

Speaker 2: 6:09

I mean, I do think you have a unique position here because you were in it, not coming from the outside. You were on the inside and you'd also experienced I guess I mean correctly, if I'm wrong seeing these people come in and try to change things, and for the better but it never worked, but then this is something that you were able to be a part of and see kind of get birthed and then actually see it start transforming from the inside out the prison.

Speaker 1: 6:39

And let me clear something up when I say that inmates started that, we did start it. We created, we had the guts to go in, put our boots on the ground, do all the things you know, but we couldn't have did it without the free world people.

Speaker 2: 6:51

So it wasn't just inmates.

Speaker 1: 6:53

I mean we had a ton of free world people Like the Kyra's men got us the dorm. But then they kind of figured out okay, you know, we, we're just going to keep loving people. And then we started having people come in helping. And if it weren't for all those guys and all those organizations that came in and, you know, partner with us, they let us take the lead for the first couple of years we couldn't have did it without them either.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yeah, you mentioned that last time. Okay, there's some things that I want to get to because I actually have been thinking about them, and one since last time is the Chris guy who was your friend. Did he get out or not? That was one, and then the other one, and you can start wherever you want, but the other one is the Steve Longenecker hearing more about that relationship. That apparently was a big deal.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Those are probably my two biggest ones during this time. Chris began his process. You know getting a parole date like you have people helping him.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Right, and there's no way you're getting out. Yeah, we don't have to rehash all that I know, but I'm just reminding people. So did he get out yesterday or now? He just wants me to bam Tell us what's the point telling stories if you don't tell stories?

Speaker 1: 7:59

So here's the. I don't know how to say this. I guess I'll just say it, since I say everything else. According to you, it's hard to make parole if you don't have people that want you to, and you need people that have influence with the parole board, because when you, when you get a parole date, you go up and you have a parole hearing, well, you don't get to go to your parole hearing. You can send, like a packet of information or something if you want to oh, you don't get to go yourself.

Speaker 2: 8:26

No, it's a my go.

Speaker 1: 8:27

No, you can't go, your family can go and other people can go and represent you. But there are people that go to the parole board that have a lot of influence with the parole board because you got certain groups, certain individuals, certain organizations. They're not going to ask for somebody to get out of prison if they don't think they can make it, and so you needed somebody. You need to be connected with as many people as you could to go to the parole board. For you, Chris was like Tom Cruise, Like he was popular. You know all the freeway people loved him.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Real quick, though. Remind me of someone you said you need to have all the connections you can have. Yeah, like who would be a good connection that someone would have that could go, because to me I'm thinking it's hard to connect with people when you're in prison.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Well no, you connect with the volunteers, with the people coming in.

Speaker 2: 9:14

Oh, okay With the volunteers.

Speaker 1: 9:16

And they're the best, because they're the ones that your family's going to go to the parole board and say let my baby go, right, right, but you do want to. You need your family to go too. They vouch for you that you have stability. You know all that stuff. But when there are several organizations Prison Fellowship, we Care, the Foundry back then it was City Hope there's just different ones that go that work in prison that when you get a parole hearing they'll go for you if they believe in you.

Speaker 2: 9:44

And those are all local in Alabama Pretty much.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Well, prison Fellowship is national. Okay, chuck Colson started that when he was out of prison. Okay, back in the 70s. That may be international, we Care's local, the Foundry's, local or not local, but state Right. And you know, I've went to the parole board for people and it's not a, it's a hard day. You have to get up at four o'clock in the morning, drive to Montgomery, stand in line, get in there. I mean, it's a lot. So to get somebody to go for you, you're asking a lot, right, and you really, they really have to believe in you. So a lot of people believed in Chris and he had a ton of people.

Speaker 2: 10:21

Right, because he was like Tom Cruise.

Speaker 1: 10:23

In the Jesus world.

Speaker 2: 10:24

Okay, no people were just um. Yeah, because I guess because he had had a lot of connections with the volunteers and the on-dorm thing, yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1: 10:33

And he's like a. He's your love because he's like, he's like a Tim Busby. You get around him, he's going to make you laugh, you feel better.

Speaker 2: 10:38

That's our friend and James' friend before me.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Yeah, tim Busby. Um, he was in our wedding. Yes, so that makes him your friend too. Yes, just, you know, he was so popular, so charismatic and he was my best friend and I would dare say in my life I've never had a friend like him before and I've never had a friend like him since, like just, you ain't never had a friend never had a friend. You're crazy on that song Until I got married. Aw, so now you're my best friend.

Speaker 2: 11:06

Thank you, babe.

Speaker 1: 11:07

And we have better benefits. So it works out better. But I had a struggle with him because he was my best friend and I loved him, but at the same time I was jealous of him, Like I always felt overlooked and over-undervalued.

Speaker 2: 11:21

Yeah, I remember you mentioned that in the last episode that you're like he was like Chris. Hey.

Speaker 1: 11:26

And I hated it. I didn't like the way I felt, but I couldn't help it.

Speaker 2: 11:29

I guess it was your insecurity.

Speaker 1: 11:31

It was. And then you know I'm not a huge people person, like I don't draw crowds. I mean I love people but I'm just not. I'm a little awkward socially. I don't like large groups. You know, if I have one or two friends I'm good. I don't need 47 friends, you know. But the free world people, they love Chris and they would always bring him stuff that he wasn't supposed to have. Like what I mean. Technically, they weren't supposed to be bringing anything there, but they did anyways.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Like if he, like just casually, mentioned the Bible translation he wanted or something, they'd bring it to him. They were always bringing him pens. We couldn't have good pens in there. Pins are luxury in prison, like cause you can't have good pens. There's always bringing him good pens. One guy brought him a watch, took a watch off and gave it to him.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Wow.

Speaker 1: 12:18

And I. But I would get jealous, like. I would be like and I'm by a game, you know, watch, but here's what would happen. That would always just make me think what does the matter with you? He would always give me whatever they gave him. So if he got a Bible translation and he saw that I wanted it, he'd give it to me. I remember he got a watch and he was so proud of his watch and he worked for three days and he came and he said I feel like, I feel like Jesus told me I'm supposed to give this to you. And so I was like I would get jealous of the his little blessings that it was getting, but then he'd give them to me. So I was like, no, I mean, it was sweet, but at the same time it was causing this, like anxiety and me like like something's wrong with me, like what is, what does the matter with me? I want to.

Speaker 2: 13:00

I don't want to be like like you were jealous but didn't want to be jealous. Yeah, I didn't want to be.

Speaker 1: 13:04

I love Chris he was he was, he was my um, he was my best friend.

Speaker 2: 13:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:09

But I was and I didn't really know what to do with that. And then I had another like in that, those initial months when we started, once we got everything settled, we got the structure built out and there were like department heads, like 10 or 12, everybody in our original group got a title. You know, chris was like the coordinator, head coordinator, somebody was the head of this, somebody was the liaison, and so everybody had a title and everybody in the honor norm had to have a job. But whoever was a department head kind of ran the department. So everybody out of our original people got a title and I didn't get a title. And then they started having meetings as we started growing, you know, as we got rid of the the bad seeds and started getting good people in there and things started taking shape.

Speaker 1: 13:56

And like meetings that I wasn't a part of, uh, making decisions that I wasn't a part of, and then I was offended because you know where's my title, what was, you know what? And I remember getting to a place where I got my feelings hurt and I had a little blow up with all of them and they were like dumbfounded. I remember like Coorhouse and Bush and Chris, and we're like, wow, you, you got it messed up and I'm like what, what are you talking about? And they said we all decided on purpose that you didn't need any extra responsibility, because the thing that you're best at is teaching classes and doing Bible studies. And we want to give you the freedom to do what we feel like God has called you to do, and you do it very well. Where's?

Speaker 2: 14:39

my thing. Why didn't they give you a title for that?

Speaker 1: 14:41

Well, eventually did I made them, I did I'm. Eventually I was like, well, if that's the thing, then you, that's going to be my department. And we figured it out because, I mean, we had a lot of resources that flooded in after that and you needed somebody to be, you know, leading that that part, because there was a lot of free where people come in and doing classes, but then we had to fill in with our classes and that was just an amazing time. We uh, there was a show that I listened to on Saturday night on a Christian radio station in Birmingham and it was these three guys.

Speaker 2: 16:40

Does this? You listened to it while you're in prison.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Yeah, I listened to it. I listened to it faithfully every Saturday night. It was cause an hour show was called come unto me and it was this young pastor that had started the church in Birmingham and his two people that worked with him and there was something just so I was drawn to them and then I pretty much had the whole honor dorm listening to the Saturday night because we didn't get a lot of good stuff in there, right, but we did. Once we started the honor dorm because people started coming in just to the honor dorm, not to the chapel. So we kind of let the religious folk, the uber religious people, we let them keep going to the chapel, and then we started like pulling in, like people that were teaching us something that mattered.

Speaker 2: 17:22

So I mean again I know we've gone over this, but when you say we let the uber religious people just the people that are just stuck in the.

Speaker 1: 17:29

You know, and I'll just say this if you do prison ministry, man, woman, whoever if you go in prison and you feel like the Lord has put a sermon on your heart, don't talk about Paul and Silas being in jail, because every time somebody came in they want to tell us this new story that they found in the Bible and we would be like they're going to talk about Paul and Silas. Paul and Silas were in prison or in jail Just some. For me, the way I've defined religion is mean. There's a lot of mean stuff going on and in the chapel you had a captive audience so they could get you in there, lock you in, you couldn't get out to. The service was over and let's just say that these big religious churches were not sitting in their best.

Speaker 2: 18:17

Well, I mean, I just want to clarify that that when you, because your negative connotation on religion and religious people is based on your experience, which was not good, no Growing up.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Yeah, not just that. It's like people get caught up on stuff that don't even matter.

Speaker 2: 18:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:36

I was at a freedom conference when we started church the house. You have to say what a freedom conference is Well, we don't want to just get too far I know, but we can't talk about things.

Speaker 1: 18:43

A freedom conference is where you go through a 12 week small group of dealing with your issues and your emotions and all the things, and then there's like a two day weekend where you just spend time getting prayed for worship. You know all the things. It's amazing. But I had a guy that struggled on the religious side, that was in my group, that pulled us out of the freedom conference to talk to us about original sin and why kids don't go to hell. And then they do if they're 12, but maybe 13. And I'm like what are you talking about? I don't whatever you're talking about. I don't want to talk about this. Like I need to go back in the freedom conference where there's life.

Speaker 2: 19:17

So he was caught up in the laws of what to do and what not to do.

Speaker 1: 19:21

But stuff that don't even matter. I mean the stuff that people get hung up on don't even matter, it don't matter. Okay, so that's kind of what I just wanted to, that's what I mean by religious people, people that come in and they're spending all this time and teaching the holler and carrying on about stuff that don't matter.

Speaker 2: 19:37

And why doesn't it?

Speaker 1: 19:37

matter, because if you read the Bible with a clear lens, it says that the whole thing is about love. It's about being connected to Jesus and about eternal life and having that life now while we're here. That's it. It's not that complicated. Jesus he actually summed it up. He said if you love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, that covers all of it you don't have to get into all the other stuff. And the teaching of the New Testament, if you read like Paul's letters, is don't get caught up in that. Don't stay away from genealogies and nonsense and interpretations and Melchizedek and all the things that people can get caught up in. And sadly, I'll just say it, a lot of churches. That's what they do, that's what they teach, that's what you spend your time in Sunday school and on Sunday mornings and you walk out of church feeling like something might beat you to death and you gotta go take a nap because where you been oh, brother, I've been to church, but it don't have to be like that.

Speaker 2: 20:42

So I just wanna I mean, cause I know your heart but really where all this kind of like comes from is that you don't want that for people you want people to be free and feel-.

Speaker 1: 20:51

To see the free, the beautiful. I mean it's in the simplicity of the gospel Jesus Christ. He loves you, it's for you, he wants you, he wants to be in a relationship with you. You don't have to have all these systems between. We made up all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 21:08

Okay, so sorry, that was a little bit of a rat trail. I don't know if that was true, but-.

Speaker 1: 21:12

Well, I mean it's good, but it was the difference between what was going on in the chapel and what was going on in the honor dorm Right which is where we left off cause.

Speaker 2: 21:18

So you started getting more and more resources in the honor dorm.

Speaker 1: 21:22

And we were wanting people to come in that were breathing life Right, not breathing religion or condemnation or anything that stuff. And we connected with these guys and they had started a church called World Victory Church a little bitty church, but it was like whatever was going on there, I was like I think this is my church, like I think you know this is- World victory Be my church?

Speaker 1: 21:43

No, but I wrote them a letter and next thing you know, they came in. They started coming in and they wanted to know what can we do for y'all and I? Some of the people had already done stuff for me. They came in the different organizations that came in and painted for us. I mean, they did a library, everything we need. We didn't need anything. Like it's crazy to say, well, we don't need anything. But I was like, well, it'd be nice to have like some CD players and cassette tape players so we could have this little part where people could study on their own and we could get resources. So they went out and bought and they didn't just buy the cheap ones, they bought like Sony's, they were the best Tape players, cd players and good headphones and that actually ended up falling under my department.

Speaker 1: 22:29

I got to keep all that in myself, which was a blessing, but then, you know, people would send us resources and music and teachings and all that kind of stuff and it just it transformed the dorm but then it started spilling over into the rest of the prison, because what ended up happening was the side of the prison that we were on it was one block and three block was on our side, two block and four block was on the other side.

Speaker 1: 22:57

Two block and four block stayed the same, you know, same everything. One block was the drug program and it had two different sides to it. One side was the drug program, one was people trying to get in the drug program. And then on three block, we had the honor dorm on one side and the other side was lockup, where I always thought that was ironic. You know my worst place. Now I see that every day as I'm going in and out. But we ended up partnering with the drug dorm because they sent you know, we talked last week about Jarrell and they sent people- help us Right, that was crazy.

Speaker 1: 23:30

But it was creating like some kind of atmosphere, some kind of energy between the two dorms, like, okay, on this side of the prison people were wanting to do something different and they ended up taking the police pressure away from us. You know, they ended up where on that side they might've had 20, 30 police down to like one or two or three we're still in prison but that we were policing ourselves. And then the drug program guys, they police themselves too. So and we had the power to like tell somebody, you can't live here, you gotta move. And they would move them. And then we'd have applications and you know, everybody not everybody didn't want to come to honor dorm, but a lot of people if they wanted something different.

Speaker 1: 24:09

It was a different. It was just like an oasis in the middle of the desert as far as prison life. That's neat and probably for me like getting to be a part of that and seeing it. It was amazing. But the biggest part for me, the most humongous part for me, was like we were really like rescuing, like people that were being sex trafficked or abused. You know people who talked about the prison families.

Speaker 2: 24:32

Oh yeah, and people that were forced into that. Almost when you get to talking about all this, you almost like forget that that's what you were in the middle of.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Yeah, well, we started, we started rescuing those guys. We started, we went on a campaign that first six months to try to. That was the we were trying to like. You know, if you want to be doing all that, if that's your prison experience, that's what you want to do. You know we're not trying to tell you not to go ahead, knock yourself out.

Speaker 1: 24:58

But if you don't want to be doing that, then we got something better for you. They let us go throughout the prison and recruit people and we ended up I mean, I can't even tell you how many people we rescued and I'm talking about these are guys that did not want to be in a sexual relationship with another man, that was basically being raped every night just to be protected, and it was sad, but it was, I don't know. It was so redeeming and to be able to watch that and I could tell you so many names, but it was amazing. And then, but also that these guys would come in and the look and remember I told you when I got the Donaldson, the dead looking people's eyes.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Yes, you said it was like coins or something. It looked like their eyes were made out of diamonds. No life, yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:45

There was nothing behind the eyes. And then getting them in there and like once they got the process and then started doing something different, it was seeing the eyes come back, like seeing their eyes light up, like seeing like life returned to their eyes. And it was still crazy to think about that. But that's what happens when you get connected. You know he who has the son has life and he who don't have the son don't have life. And it's like God was just breathing on us in there and just people were getting it in life and just get stuff.

Speaker 2: 26:17

So do you think that that's remember back, I think, when you were in lockup and you felt like the Lord told you you're gonna be my man in Birmingham. Yeah, Do you think that's what he was talking about? What was going on here with the honor dorm?

Speaker 1: 26:34

No, that's not in Birmingham, that's in Billsmore.

Speaker 2: 26:37

See, to me it's all the same. West Jefferson County.

Speaker 1: 26:41

I need to take you out on a ride and take you to Donelson and let you see. Yeah, I, because it was it's far away, it's a different country, but there was a lot of stuff that happened during that time. I went on a chiro's weekend, you know I talked about that.

Speaker 2: 26:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:56

That totally changed me, because Really.

Speaker 1: 26:59

Yeah, it made me understand because it was like there were Baptists and Catholics and Methodists and Episcopalians and you know assembly it was. Everybody was there and their only job is to love you and they they spend time just loving you and I made some connections there that have had off the rest of my life. But it made me understand, like everybody that loves Jesus and has Jesus, it don't matter where you go to church, you know that we're, we're all God's people. And it changed me. It did it really like I came away from my chiro's weekend after my three days with them and they did a lot of ceremonial stuff, like at the end they would start a fire and you would write things that you needed to forgive people you didn't forgive and you know I'd been just through a process of trying to forgive everybody. I felt like I don't have anybody to write on my list.

Speaker 2: 27:50

That's refreshing what was, but then I'm sure you've gotten some more since then right, oh yeah, plenty.

Speaker 1: 27:57

But Jesus said you need to write yourself on the list. If you want to forgive something or somebody, you write your name on there and throw in the fire and just move on. Come with me, let's move on, and it was very powerful.

Speaker 2: 28:09

Oh, that's neat.

Speaker 1: 28:09

That was a very powerful weekend, but in the cookies, oh my gosh, the cookies, the cookies from the chiro's weekend, the chapel work you interrupt me, okay, do you think the cookies hold on?

Speaker 2: 28:18

do you think the cookies would be like if you had one right now? Do you think it would be as good as it was when you had it actually in the chiro's weekend?

Speaker 1: 28:25

No, but they were still good cookies. They were homemade cookies.

Speaker 2: 28:27

They were still good.

Speaker 1: 28:28

It's like if you go six months without eating bread and then you have a yeast roll, it's gonna taste different.

Speaker 2: 28:34

Well, I want a cookie right now, because I haven't had bread in a while.

Speaker 1: 28:37

Well, don't interrupt me on this, you're interrupting the rest of it.

Speaker 2: 28:40

Okay, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 1: 28:41

The chapel workers will go through, because they kept the cookies in a bowl on the 12 tables and they would refill them. You could use as many cookies as you wanted to and I was like they ain't gonna keep refilling these cookies. They kept refilling the cookies, but when the chapel workers would swap the bowls out, the bowls will have cookie crumbs in the bottom and they kept Ziploc bags in the office that they would go dump the crumbs in. So at the end of a chiro's weekend they'd have like five gallons of cookie crumbs and they would bring them back to other people and you know I had it.

Speaker 1: 29:10

Later on I'd have a roommate that was a chapel runner. He would always bring me back the chiro's crumbles. I mean the cookie crumbles. And they were so good because it was every cookie, it was all the cookies but just the crumbs. It was just the crumbs. But it's crazy. Chiro's weekend was good. It affected me, it changed me. Chiro's number 27,. I met a man there, marvin Carnes, that became. He started coming in and seeing me every week.

Speaker 1: 29:34

It was his first Chiro's. He was, I believe he was Methodist, but he was a Jesus follower, but he was kind of not. He was a businessman Like I kind of want to come here and do this, but I kind of don't, because I feel like he's supposed to be here. And he and I developed a relationship and he came to see me every Wednesday morning and he was one of those people. That was just one of my people. And it was amazing that I met him through that.

Speaker 2: 29:57

So do you still? Are you still in contact with him today?

Speaker 1: 30:00

I haven't seen him since I started Chiro's. He was one of my original investors in Chiro's and I don't know how we lost. I don't know how we lost track. We don't run in the same circles. We don't go to the same church. We don't. I need to. I actually need to look him up.

Speaker 2: 30:13

Makes me want to look him up on the social platform, I think.

Speaker 1: 30:15

I have looked him up on social media. You know everybody on their Facebook, I know, I know. Remember last week we talked about when I met Steve Longenacker and he was a menonite.

Speaker 2: 30:25

Yes.

Speaker 1: 30:26

And let's don't get deep into that again. If you want more about that, go to the last episode. But he was part of a group. A prison minister called we Care. That's out of Atmore, alabama, and once a year it's called the we Care Revival. So they bring people from up north down into the prisons and they have them like flood the prisons 50, 100 of them and they're from menonites living in communities. So they're like from Pennsylvania and Indiana, ohio. You know that's how they like they live their menonite communities. But they would have them come down once a year. It's called the we Care Revival. It's in around the beginning of the year and it was odd having them in there because they didn't preach at you. You know, most of the time you've seen a prison ministry guy. He'd wanna carry a Bible and start quoting scriptures to you and then some guys would wanna write your name down in their Bible.

Speaker 2: 31:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:31

And I would say don't write my name down in your Bible, because I already had Jesus before he came in here. Get aggravated with him.

Speaker 2: 31:38

I actually don't know that. I mean, I've never heard that actually.

Speaker 1: 31:41

No, it's like a ministry thing. They go back and show all the names of all their work and all the stuff that they're doing.

Speaker 2: 31:46

That seems kind of show off-y or something. Yeah, I don't like it.

Speaker 1: 31:51

But I always would say don't put your name, don't put my name in your Bible. And then I had a really sweet old man one time. He said I'm writing your name in my Bible because I wanna pray for you. And I was like, oh burn, I'm sorry, I'm bad, but they didn't do any of that. The only thing they did was come in and talk to people, spend time and just love on you. And it was weird and they were Yankees, so they talked funny and so it was different. But I was skeptical of them. The first day they were in and they went to lunch with us and they sat down and they ate the nasty prison food and that just it blew my mind. I was like why?

Speaker 1: 32:31

I mean why would you do that? But it was because they had Jesus and they loved him and they were wanting to love us the way that Jesus loved them.

Speaker 2: 32:41

Obviously, it made an impression on you that they would just sit there and eat what? You had to eat, it wasn't?

Speaker 1: 32:45

just on me. It made an impression on everybody. It was like these. Whoever these men and night people are, they're the real deal, cause ain't nobody gonna eat our food.

Speaker 2: 32:54

I mean, we didn't even wanna eat our prison food.

Speaker 1: 32:56

But they would eat with us and spend time with us, but then at the end of the week they would have like this big gathering in the chapel and they had a guy did a service and afterward he said if you need prayer, come up. And so Chris said I think we need to go up and pray and I said maybe. And then we got in the line I based again. I went, cause he went. I was not gonna go up there, but when we got up there it was a different kind of like you know what, in the screaming, hollering kind of prayer.

Speaker 1: 33:27

The guy pulled me in and laid his hands on me and, just like, asked God to bless me and then I felt like God's presence in a crazy powerful way. But then, as he was praying for me, he opened his eyes, he grabbed my hands and he looked at me and he said Jesus wants to heal you of the unforgiveness you have towards your daddy. And I started crying and you know my mind was like you know the hocus pocus stuff. But he read me, he read my, he told me what my issue was and it was my issue. That was where my insecurity, my almost stuff, was coming from at that time and like it just broke me and I was crying. I was trying not to cry cause people were out there and Chris was behind me and I, you know I'm skeptical.

Speaker 1: 34:16

So I'm like I'm gonna stay behind Chris, see, if he tells me he's got daddy issues. And he started he prayed for Chris and it was powerful. And he told Chris he needed to forgive his mother. And it's true, his mom left him. When he's little, like you know, he was a vagabond with his dad and then he started crying and I didn't even know his mom's name, cause he never talked about her. She was like dead to him.

Speaker 1: 34:41

But and then it was like every guy that went up there, what? And all of us didn't go up there and get prayed for, but everybody that went up there, he gave us something like concrete, like this is what God wants to work on in your life right now. And it was amazing, it was just Wow. And that's the only time that ever happened where somebody like directly told me something that was relevant. I remember having plenty of people tell me, lord told me to tell you you know you don't really mean anything, but that was powerful. But the way they came in, they spent four days with us. But the way they came in, the little, just like the love fest they left behind, I love that.

Speaker 1: 35:20

Cause we were stressed out with what we were doing on a dorm. But something happened. Things shifted after that, and then Steve came in.

Speaker 2: 35:29

Steve Longenacker Steve.

Speaker 1: 35:30

Longenacker. Oh, and let me, let me say this he grew up in a night and he had started a church and it was a interdenominational, he called it, so he wasn't part of the big M in a night space. He still had an anabaptist background.

Speaker 2: 35:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:43

He came in. His class was on resolving conflict. It was a 12 week class, you know. He had one of us participate and have notes and all that stuff and I didn't like him. I just I tried to like everybody liked him. Oh, steve, steve, steve, steve, steve. And I'm like he's up to something, like there's some reason, ain't nobody gonna come here three times a week and just spend time in this hot place with no air, you know? And I couldn't like him. But then when we started his first class, he went around there were about 30 of us in his class and he said if you tell me your name when I come back next week, I'll remember your name. And I was like I can never say that Ain't no way.

Speaker 1: 36:28

So he came around to me and he said you're James K Jones. And I said yep, that's my name. And the next week when he came back he went around and he got to me and he paused and I was like I got him. Got him, and he said James K. So it impressed me a little bit. I started kind of listening to him.

Speaker 1: 36:49

But his, the material he got, he wasn't like doing Bible study, he was teaching like practical, like life skills, like we all. Y'all got a lot of conflict in here. This is how I'm gonna help. You know, some of the stuff can help you, but at the end of every one of his sessions he would start at the end of the thing and be like okay, you're number one, keep going, we're gonna count up to five. And the first time we didn't know what he was doing. So it was one, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. And then he would say all the ones get up, go over there. Y'all are in group one, group two.

Speaker 1: 37:18

And he made us sit in small groups of five people with a little handout and talk about the stuff that he talked about. And we didn't like that. We didn't like that at all. We hated actually, we hated it. We thought it was. It's like oh, what does he do? Like I don't wanna talk to you, I wanna talk to him, but it was not the normal way of doing. You know, you come in, you do a little sermon and then you know, that's it Like a lecture.

Speaker 1: 37:45

He didn't do it that way he would give a little bit of a topic and teach us some stuff and then want us to hash it out between each other Like interactive, yeah, and we hated it. But that was 20, 22, 23 years ago. I, to this day, I still remember everything that we learned during that Wow OPV, other persons viewpoint. But it was because he put us in small groups and made us do that and then later on we adopted that in honor dorm. You know, I've been doing small groups ever since. You know small groups where is that? Yeah, that was huge. Then we had a lot of.

Speaker 1: 38:23

We started attracting like some of the older Christian brotherhood and it was mostly the older African-American guys that would start coming in. And you know, we loved them, we respect them. They were the nice ones. They weren't the ones that were running around, but once they got in there, they didn't want a part of what we were doing. Like they were like we don't care about what you're doing and it's like, well then you probably shouldn't be living here.

Speaker 1: 38:45

Like you know, like we had rules, like if there was class, you couldn't be carrying on a hollering, but they would do their daily prayer long drawn out prayer thing and they get loud and then they would sing loud songs and I remember one time they were singing you know, victory is mine, victory is mine. And then they'd add words to it Love is mine. And I remember I think it was Jarell Jones walked up in the middle of the cell where they were and started clapping and saying respect for others is mine, respect for others is mine. But that was. It was creating a lot of conflict and I think I was maybe like six weeks in the Steve's class. I was sitting there and I was aggravated with the particular old man and Mr Johnny, because he was like he was two or three times my age and he was respectful and nice and you know, but he was mean to me, he didn't like me. I could tell it and it was like nothing we did was good enough for him.

Speaker 1: 39:36

And he would mumble under his breath and you know, it was like he was causing like division that we didn't, and I didn't understand it. And I was so frustrated and I was sitting there during the break from a class and I felt like Jesus said Steve's a pastor, why don't you go ask him what he would do? And I was like I don't, I don't even like him, like why would I talk to him? I don't even like him and I didn't. There's something about him that rubbed me the wrong way, even when he was teaching, like something, something to rub me the wrong way.

Speaker 1: 40:02

But I went over to him and I just said, look, can I ask you a question? And I told him what was going on, mr Johnny, and he said James, I came in here to help you, I'm here to help you. And so I was like OK, well, can you help me with this? And what he did was he helped me understand Mr Johnny. I know I talked about Mr Johnny a few episodes back when I talked about the Life Without Perot. Yeah, he was the older black man that was in prison for with Life Without Perot, for stealing a toolbox off the back.

Speaker 2: 40:39

Right, I do remember that.

Speaker 1: 40:41

And I knew he had Life Without Perot. I knew it was unfair, all the things, but I didn't really understand. But for Mr Johnny's viewpoint Steve helped me understand this it was because he was black. The way he saw it, it was the white man. They just locked me up, put me here to die and when I understood that it changed everything. I didn't even want to bother with him, no more.

Speaker 1: 41:03

And then Chris, chris was always reading the Bible and wanting to do what they did in the Bible and like one time we went and got rebaptized I'll tell you about that in a second. But he said you know, jesus said we're supposed to wash each other's feet. And I said that was when they had sandals. And you know, I don't think that's for now. I mean, I don't see how that's. You know this is 1998. Nobody don't need me washing their feet. I don't want nobody touching my feet. But he needled me about it for two or three days.

Speaker 1: 41:35

And what was going on with me and Chris? They called us Thunder and Lightning. And because that was, there was in the New Testament some two of Jesus's fathers, james and John. They were brothers, they were sons of Zebedee and they called them the sons of Thunder. So Chris and I did everything together Like if you saw me, you saw him, if you saw him, you saw me. If we were leading the class doing Bible studies, like it was my, that was my favorite, like we would, because then it wouldn't all be on me. And then he was kind of like an eye personality, very sanguine, like he couldn't stay on track. I could help him stay on track with what we were doing and they they called us Thunder and Lightning. That was their thing. Here they come, they always stirring up something, but it was for good, it wasn't for bad.

Speaker 1: 42:18

But we I let him talk me into going to wash Mr Johnny's feet and we went and told him we want to wash your feet and he was like no, brother, no, I love you in Jesus name. But we was like no, we feel like we're supposed to do that. We brought him out in the middle of the day room and there were maybe not all 95 men were looking, but all 95 men could have been looking in the middle of right. We did it publicly and we sat him down and we took his shoes off and we brought hot soapy water. We washed his feet and dried them and by the end of that Mr Johnny was crying, I was crying, chris was crying and I think probably some of the hard conflicts we've been crying, but it it broke him of that, he realized that we were not against him, we were for him in that and he participated after that, like he became one of them. He became one of them, not really closest friends, but like somebody that I respected and loved and valued and in return he became to where he respected and loved and valued me and actually, you know, affirmed me later on. It's making me cry, but anyway, steve helped me understand that.

Speaker 1: 43:24

And then, you know, once we got up and got going, things started happening. We started getting influx of other people trying to come in there. Like you know, there was like the new agey people. There was one guy, troy, that was wanting to teach, you know, hook the trees and do the meditation mats and all that stuff. But it was always something, I guess, like always tension always, but it was good because we were.

Speaker 1: 43:52

We would look back and be like it's only been two months since that happened and now look how far the balls move forward and how much you know, just getting to be a part of watching people change and it was not easy because we found out really, really quick you can take people out of like regular prison, but it takes a little bit of a process to get prison out of them because they're, you know, you don't, trust, you don't. But we were in a place there. We didn't even have to lock our door because people didn't steal from each other. There was no violence, no, nothing. It was just we had a space to learn and to grow and we had all these people coming in that were pouring into us and I don't know it was for me it was amazing.

Speaker 1: 44:36

And then we had a lot of practical stuff. I mean we had guys coming in teaching, like I remember Joe Brumbach came in and taught a thing called Beat the Streets. Who's talking about? You know how to get out of gang stuff and drugs and all the stuff. Just practical stuff. Steve did a lot of practical stuff. We partnered with a reading and writing program that will come out of the chapel twice a week. That was called Lawbalk Reading and Writing and it had been there the whole time but people weren't taking advantage of it and it was basically it was to combat adult literacy and they let me be a tutor. I mean I'm not good at a lot of stuff, but I'm good at reading. You know I can spell. I mean that's always been easy, math and stuff like that Not so much. But so I started doing that. The first guy that I had I can't remember his name, his nickname was Spark Plug. They called him Plug. He was Spark.

Speaker 2: 45:27

Plug.

Speaker 1: 45:28

But he was like my granny's age. He was an old man but he was completely illiterate and he had got to a place where he was willing to say that and they gave us the stuff, the tools. And then I found a hooked on phonics book that was in the library and you know, it took him three or four months but he started reading and eventually he didn't have to come out to me anymore.

Speaker 2: 45:50

That's neat, because he was, he was reading, and but he was always so thankful.

Speaker 1: 45:54

He didn't even live in the honor dorm, but he was always so thankful, you know, because I didn't make him feel bad. But then I had another guy in there, johnny, I'll call him Johnny D. It was not Mr Johnny, the one I was just talking about.

Speaker 2: 46:04

This was.

Speaker 1: 46:05

Johnny, Johnny D I. Someone says last name because this is his story, If he wants to tell it. He was a older man.

Speaker 1: 46:12

He was a older man, probably in his 40s, very sharp, he talked perfectly. He kept himself. You know he pressed his clothes and you know he was just like one of those Like you would think, like he was a college professor and he, he loved to talk. You know all the things. But if one of our rules were if you didn't have a GD, you had to be working towards it because we had GD classes, okay. So when he tried to go do the GD classes, they found out he had a reading problem. So they said he not ready for GD class and he needs to go to Lawbalk. So they sent him to Lawbalk and then I became his tutor.

Speaker 1: 46:52

He was my second guy that I had. I became his tutor but he didn't want to do any of the work. When he came out there and he would like want to talk about stuff and I'm like look, johnny, we can talk in the dorm and we can talk all the time, all day long, but out here I have two hours, two days a week and if you don't want to learn something, you don't want to do this and let me work with somebody else, because there's other people on the waiting list and me and him got in a little bit of conflict because I'm you know, you know I am, if I got a task, I don't want to talk about the task, I want to do the task. Right, we can talk about after, we talk about it before, let's just do the thing.

Speaker 1: 47:28

But he didn't want to do the thing and we got in a little heated argument and you know I was kind of harsh with him but we started, kept trying to dig with him like where he needed to start. He did not know his ABCs, he didn't know ABCDFG, he didn't come to find out. We had to start with the alphabet. And that shocked me, just knowing him, and you know I couldn't hide it, I wasn't being mean to him, I wasn't like putting forth like any condemnation or anything like that, but I it was unbelievable.

Speaker 2: 48:02

Right, because he came across as so dignified.

Speaker 1: 48:05

Yeah, and that you could live on the earth for 40 years and not learn your ABCs, right, I mean it. Just it freaked me out and it showed on my face and he got offended and it hurt his feelings and so he left and he said he wasn't coming back and I said that was good and he said that's good. Well, he was on my nerves Like he wasn't.

Speaker 2: 48:24

He wasn't trying to do anything different.

Speaker 1: 48:26

Fast forward two, three weeks, they put in the thing to dismiss him from the honor dorm because he wouldn't get his GD and wouldn't go to reading and writing.

Speaker 1: 48:33

And he was on the list, I think, to move the next day, like we were going to have him moved. And I went to him and I went in the cell and I shut the door and I said look, I know you can't read and I don't know what that feels like, but I mean, I can imagine and I know that you can't read and I know you don't know your ABCs and you know that I know that you can't read and you know that I know that you don't know your ABCs, but I promise you, I've not breathed a word of that to anybody. And since I know that I know and you know that I know, why don't you just come out there and let's learn how to read, and then you can stay here and you can keep going. You don't have to. And he said, yes, came out the next day. We started with a, b, but like I would do with Lula, you think he was?

Speaker 2: 49:25

I mean this. Maybe it sounds stupid, but he was, like it was his pride. He was just really embarrassed and humiliated. How could he not be?

Speaker 1: 49:32

And, but no, but to have to carry that your whole life and try and hide it, I guess, and especially the way he was.

Speaker 1: 49:37

He was so boisterous about everything else. So he came out and he started and around to read. Two weeks he was reading sentences two weeks. But I worked with him back in the dorm a little bit so he was the house man at night, like he got to stay out after they locked down the cells and he did all the floors. The first thing he ever read was the Bible. He started I get emotional thinking about him. It was just.

Speaker 1: 50:02

But the change, the way happened to change. He uh, started reading the Bible. It was the first words you'd ever read and then he gave his heart to Jesus. He got saved. He never became like religious but he had the life and it was all because he wouldn't accept that he couldn't read. And I mean there's a lesson in that. I mean that's powerful, like when we accept the truth or accept where we're at, accept responsibility. But his change happened and he was so free after that he was like a little kid, just you know, and he would pick up books and read them, and pick up magazines and newspapers and read them, whereas before he would have to find a way to get somebody to read that to him without them knowing, because it was his secret.

Speaker 2: 50:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 50:44

And he had lived his life like that and it was just stuff like that happening. For me that was amazing, just to be a part of that and you know, but that affected the rest of his life, not just. You know, I've saw him on this side. You know he's doing his thing.

Speaker 2: 51:00

Oh you have, yeah, Awesome. But that I mean. What is he doing now? I know people want to know. I want to know.

Speaker 1: 51:07

I haven't seen him. You lose touch. I think the last time I saw him, maybe it was 2004 or five. Okay, haven't seen him. I don't even know that he stayed in Birmingham. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 51:19

Was he about, you know? You said he was like 40 years old then.

Speaker 1: 51:21

Yes, he probably be like in the 60s now. Yeah, he was like my mom's age, but it was to me. Stuff like that is a miracle, but it's just a process of you know, accepting reality, such a responsibility, and then just what happens after that.

Speaker 2: 51:37

And getting help too. Yeah, Like accepting and getting help, and you're right, that is such a lesson, I think, for I mean all us free world people too, as you call them. But just like, yeah, if there's things you know, like how much better we could be and freer and we could be if we were to do that in certain areas that we tend not to.

Speaker 1: 51:59

Oh yeah, For whatever reason you know, come on about that. That's how you, that's where you that's part of freedom to me is accepting. You have to accept. You know I was in Highlands cause they told us that when you're going through people that like if they've been through a terrible situation or grief or any kind of issue, like your end goal is get them to accept, just to get them to accept it. And once they accept it, then God can work and you know you can have other people help you. But that was that, was that? But during this whole process of that first seven or eight months, chris was got a pro date. Uh, he was doing his faith thing and you know name and claim and believe and receive and pray and the slaying and all that.

Speaker 2: 52:35

Yeah, I'm still being very patient about that.

Speaker 1: 52:38

Well, I think I want to say one more thing for, for, for. We wrapped this part up. Okay, we were reading, we started just studying church history during this time, and we we read a book on like the Pentecostal religion that started around the turn of the 20th century.

Speaker 2: 52:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:52

It was the Zusa street revival. I don't want to get deep into that, but that some denominations came out of that, some Pentecostal denominations came out of that, where they said all y'all folks getting baptized in the name of the father and the son, the Holy spirit, y'all are wrong. Y'all are supposed to be baptized in the name of Jesus. Go read the book of acts. And so we would read in the book of acts and it was say and we baptize them in the name of Jesus. And so I was like, oh, we got to get our baptism. Didn't take, because you know, I had my one baptism where wet my head in the uh, in the jail bathroom.

Speaker 2: 53:24

Right, right.

Speaker 1: 53:25

And then I had my church Christ in the, the wooden casket with the water in it, one with the certificate, my official one. And then I just said I think I think we're supposed to get re baptized in the name of Jesus. So I said it, then Chris said it, and then there was about 45 other people that decided they needed to do it as well. So when they were baptized and we all lined up and went to the chapel, they didn't even have 45 robes Like we were, but we started such a stir at the prison that the older brothers got upset. And then the, the, why were they upset?

Speaker 1: 53:58

Because they said we were making division. And then they, they were like, okay, um, jesus said to be baptized in the name of the father, son, the Holy spirit and the book acts. They say the name of Jesus, it's the same name. G, the name of Jesus is the name of the father, you know. But we're like, nope, we're doing the name of Jesus, we're doing the name of Jesus.

Speaker 1: 54:16

So we all went through, we had it was fun, like the guy baptizing this, he, he wasn't that bother with us. But then it spread throughout the other parts of the Christian brotherhood world and the next guy that came in, he did not like it and when he was baptizing this guy, he actually took him and baptized him, slammed him under the water and was like in the name of the father splash, pulled him back up in the name of the son, in the name of the Holy spirit, in the name of Jesus, because he was aggravated Like this ain't even what this is about and it's not what it's about. But we thought that we needed to do make something right. So we were going to make it right and and it was funny. But, um, so I've been baptized three times, but the first one where they went.

Speaker 1: 55:04

My head in the bathroom. That was my. That was enough, yeah. But you know Highlands, when I started going, we started going to house. I know when they baptized people they said I'm going to baptize you in the name of the father, son, holy spirit, in the name of Jesus.

Speaker 1: 55:14

Like they're, like let's just cover it all and be done with it. Yeah, Um, because it really doesn't. It's not, it's a symbolic thing. It's like we're in a wedding band, it's like right. You know, that make you a part of Jesus is just showing. It's a public declaration. We did that. But uh, we did a lot of stuff like that where we were called stir up controversy but it wasn't for bad.

Speaker 1: 55:35

It was like, in that case we were wrong, but we thought we were right and there wasn't nobody helping us understand why we weren't right. Right, is that what you're saying? Yeah, but just like the influence we had over other people, like they're like well, we're all get baptized in the name of Jesus, um, but then, uh, chris's pro date was coming up. He had, uh, a litany of people going down for him. Yeah, he went and he made it, he made parole. He wasn't supposed to make parole like people like him to make parole, especially on the first time, but I remember it was.

Speaker 1: 56:09

I was so 50, 50, because I was so happy for him and he was so excited and I wanted him to be free and I wanted, but then I didn't want him to leave me. Yeah, and I was jealous of him. Like, I want to make parole, why can't I make parole? So I was dealing with that. But then, um, there's a it's like a torture thing they do with the Alabama parole board. You don't get a date, you make parole, you find out, you made it, they tell you people. Then they tell you made it, and every Monday they do a parole like people that are leaving. You've made parole, but you can stay there. Chris stayed there an extra.

Speaker 1: 56:44

It was like three months but it was like every Sunday night because he was my self partner by the time. I was like every Sunday night praying and believing and all that stuff and then the next day, monday, would be the day and then it wouldn't be.

Speaker 1: 56:55

So you know it was at least another seven days and it was just, it was taking its toll on me. That's torture. It was hard, that was, that was a tough time and he was he, he, uh, he I mean there, you know kept doing you know what, because we were busy too. Like well, we started with the honor dorm, we had stuff to do, we were, you know, rocking and rolling, doing the things, but then, um, when he left, I got very depressed. It was, um, honestly, the first day he left I stayed in my cell and cried the whole day. I did, I know, but I was in that place now by myself, and then Glover. If I was ever depressed, glover would always want to come sing cause that would make me feel better. And usually it did make me feel. Come on, brother, let's get up here and sing some praises to the Lord and feel better. But that day I didn't. I was like, no, I don't, I don't want to do all that. I'm happy for Chris, I love him, but I miss him.

Speaker 2: 57:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:49

And uh, he was like well, I'll just sit with you, brother, maybe we can play some Monopoly. You got a soup in the box, I can have some. And uh, you know that, lean on me song lean on me yeah. He started. He was so silly he started singing. Lean on, Chris. When you're not strong, glover, get out of my cell I don't need you right now I'm already, I'm dealing with this.

Speaker 1: 58:14

This is hard and uh, but it was during. During that time, too, chris was gone, but he didn't lose touch with me and I had touched with him through people I knew and a world victory church was a church he went to. So he met some of those guys and, uh, probably just for the sake of saying it, um, do that world victory church. Coming in, I met a pastor, sean, his teacher, billy Tommy Thomas, who had become a big part of my life, and Mike Miller, who is listening podcast right now.

Speaker 1: 58:43

You know Mike Miller do you know that Glenn Miller is his dad.

Speaker 2: 58:47

I did know that, yes.

Speaker 1: 58:48

Yeah, so that's where I met him the first time. Yeah, Um, he was a young, young fella coming up in there doing prison ministry. Um, but one of the connections I made with him we had Steve had just taught us the five love languages, but we didn't have the books or the materials, so everything I had I would take notes and then rewrite it, and he was telling me something about. He struggled him with his wife's charity over something. Oh, you just got to know her love language. And he was like what is that? So the next week when he came in, I gave him like it all written out and with a pen on a legal pad, oh, you mean, like what the love languages were.

Speaker 1: 59:23

Yeah, and a diagram I made and if you do, if you're, you know, if your access service do this, don't do that. If your words do this, but don't do this. And he started crying and I was like what's the matter? He was like I'm just so touched and I was like I'm just trying to help you out and he was like, well, it's not that you gave me the materials, that you used your pen and you wrote it, and but stuff, a lot, of, a lot of good stuff happened in there with that. It's just crazy stuff. And then you know Gil Franks, randy Walker, they came from the Word of Life Christian Center and in Birmingham, alabama that's what the guy said on the radio program they came in, they were, they were like our key players. They were, you know, pushing the ball forward and making stuff happen. And both of those guys are still making stuff happening.

Speaker 2: 1:00:11

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:11

And then Randy Walker. Now he started the church of the Highlands prison ministry and they're in every prison and the like, not just going in, and they do actual church services.

Speaker 2: 1:00:20

Small groups, but they were helping you with the or y'all with this honor dorm.

Speaker 1: 1:00:24

Yeah, they were one of my original people and I met Gil when I was in Kilby and I liked him. He was just there's something. So like you could tell Gil really loved you and he wasn't trying to, you know, get something, get credit, no agenda. Yeah, he was just loving Jesus. And then Randy was the same. I I maybe wrong I think Randy had been a sheriff, so he was a little more like he saw the world as it was, kind of like a realist.

Speaker 2: 1:00:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:50

And I remember I was struggling with the lawyer. I was having to hire a lawyer to settle my case in Shelby County and cause the public defender was not helping me and I thought I needed to hire a Christian lawyer. Cause you know, the Bible says counsel ungodly. Don't do that. And the Christian lawyer that I talked to sounded like a weak, like a wet dish rag, and I was like I'm scared, Like you got my life in your hands and I went to Gil and asked his advice and he was like don't.

Speaker 1: 1:01:18

He said no, no, you don't want to. You know you don't. That's not what you want. If you're going in the courtroom, you need somebody to fight for you. And he was like Randy, come here. Come here, tell James what kind of lawyer he needs to hire. Is his choice. Does he need to hire a Christian lawyer? And before he got Christian lawyer out of his mouth, randy said, he pointed me, he said, james, you need to hire a tenacious bulldog. If you're walking up in a courtroom, you need to. You need to. You need to tenacious bulldog that was going to fight for you.

Speaker 1: 1:01:39

And we did, and I got time served on that case. So just practical stuff like that. And then, you know, chris left. After that I got, I was like getting burnout, just like on the classes, the teaching, all the structural things, cause we were working, you know, 24 hours a day. It felt like, and we wasn't getting a lot of like refreshment. And then I didn't have a pastor or anybody telling me what to do but I kept making up stuff to do and I had, oh, I need to go, do I need to do this?

Speaker 2: 1:02:09

every day. I can relate to that every day.

Speaker 1: 1:02:12

And I tried to give Christian radio another chance and there was this loud the, the. When I heard the ladies voice the first time I was like I ain't listening to her. She said I don't mean, but uh, she had a real gruff voice and she was on for 30 minutes in the morning. But I started listening to her every morning. Something like sucked me into listening to her and she was talking about grace versus works and following Jesus Like God gives us grace, he wants he wants to love you and he wants you to relax and all that. And I would like fill up notebooks with her little 30 minutes that she did money through Friday.

Speaker 1: 1:02:44

Nobody was like real stuff. That was teaching me like you don't have to figure this out and you're in in charge, you know guys in charge. And I found out she had a ministry and I wrote her a letter and I told her you know I've been listening to you like for the last couple of months, just the way like my life has changed my relationship with Jesus. And then I told her what we were doing and actually sent her a copy of the vision for the honor during the land negotiation vision. Three weeks later, coverhouse, who worked in the chapel was like we got a box and it came from Joyce Meyer Ministries and I was like really, like that was fast. She sent us literally everything she had wow everything it was.

Speaker 1: 1:03:23

We went through and did the math. On just the CDs and the tapes it was over a thousand hours of content. Wow that we could and that would end up being a huge blessing to me for those people that don't know who.

Speaker 2: 1:03:32

Joyce Meyer is.

Speaker 1: 1:03:33

She's a One that was rescued by Jesus. Her story is incredible. I mean her background she comes from. Her daddy molestered her and I'm just, she was in up. She got married young. Her husband abandoned her but she got in a relationship with Jesus. He started changing her life and now she tells her stories, things, his song, and she's Affected the globe.

Speaker 2: 1:03:56

She's a great communicator, she and, like you said, just very practical and real application stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:04:01

Yeah, transparent, yeah, and but uh that that blew my mind that she would Send us. She didn't send us like a token, like that member, david Jeremiah, told me. I'll send you how to get saved. Oh, yeah, yeah she literally sent us everything she was the opposite into the spectrum. She's seen it all books, tapes, cds, worship music syllabus is for class. I've still got.

Speaker 2: 1:04:26

The syllabus is like I've seen some of this stuff, you're like, oh yeah, that's what I got when I was in prison. I'm sure the joy sent me. Well, no, it was just so. You, my friend Joyce, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:04:35

If you want, if you had a subject you need to help teaching the class, you just took her syllabus and you laid it down. You just went through the syllabus and it had the scriptures, what they meant, you know, and it was just she made it so easy, like, yeah, she blessed, she blessed me. Like I mean not, not, not just me, us that was that was a game changer light.

Speaker 1: 1:04:50

It was actually a life changer for me and we probably want to end this one here because we're right at 59 minutes and, okay, you know I have this paranoia of going over. I know I feel like y'all ain't gonna listen to me if I'm talking for More than an hour, but at the end of that there was a chapel worker that I met that was part of the honor dorm. He's one of the original ones that helped us start Jason Hunter cover house. He I was sketchy like Luria him because he was in prison for murder and he murdered his mother, his father and his brother. And Remember I told you that you don't ask people what they're in prison for yeah if you have a famous case like that, people know let's say that again.

Speaker 2: 1:05:31

I mean cuz it's unbelievable. He murdered his mother, his brother and his father?

Speaker 1: 1:05:37

Yes, but, and he had been in prison for like almost the same amount as me, was like six, seven years, but he had I Might have been six months before I got there he went on Kyra's weekend and had an experience with Jesus and Turned his life around, did you?

Speaker 2: 1:05:55

say you wanted to be your roommate.

Speaker 1: 1:05:57

Yes, well, no, by this time I trusted him. Okay, I'll tell you this part too. This, this might freak you out. If he ever was out on the yard running or didn't have a shirt on, he had a life-size tattoo on his back of a devil hovering With three tombstones that said mom, dad, bro, and then the letters. The devil made me do it.

Speaker 2: 1:06:21

So he was cow.

Speaker 1: 1:06:22

According to what they told me about cover house, he was one of the most evil people that had ever walked and was Jeff like he was. He was bad.

Speaker 2: 1:06:32

I don't know how you cannot, I mean, but not when I met him.

Speaker 1: 1:06:36

He went and had an experience with Jesus and I think we're gonna come back around and tell some more that at some point. But His story is one of the most amazing stories that I've ever heard and it is the song amazing grace. It's amazing grace the way his story ended up. But he Asked if he could move in my cell and Chris left because he wanted to study the faith stuff and the stuff I was doing, because he wanted to learn some stuff, and Actually I said yes, but he ended up teaching me more than I ever thought him. He taught me about grace. I mean, he taught me about you know how to just trust God and remember telling one time how do you, uh, if you ain't been at this but a minute, how do you know, how'd you learn all that? And he said, james, if you come to Jesus and you have the blood of your mama and your daddy and your brother on your hands, yeah, it's learn about grace real quick, because you ain't kind of where it's else to go and he would end up being one of my best friends. I mean, to this day I still in contact with him, but uh, that's probably where we need to wrap this one up.

Speaker 1: 1:07:42

Basically, one half of that prison became new and it was new. In a way, it was practically new. You know they start giving us paint and let us fix it up. We fix it up. It looked new. But the atmosphere, the atmosphere, oh my gosh, like when you, when I first got in there, it was like you could cut the air with a knife. It was just so evil. And if we ever had to go on the other side of prison, like for Sometimes they'd have an assembly over there. If you had a certain package you had to pick up over there, you could feel it. It was like if you had a knife or a spoon or so you could. It was just thick with evil, just it was evil, and we didn't have that experience on the other side. It was like there was a black curse on the left side of the prison and Then there was, like this, freedom and light on our side of the prison. We're still in prison, still locked up.

Speaker 1: 1:08:32

Yeah but we were, there was stuff happening and and there was the Volunteers were like the bedrock of that, because they were, they were faithful, they made it happen, they came in, they got in our business and we didn't have like, but also y'all were willing to do the work. We did a lot of work and and really the the like the work that we did was not that complicated. We came up with a process to where we were going to confront behaviors and then train people and help them learn and but we could we never. The cardinal rule was we don't not confront, because in prison if you not confront once, then it's gonna spread. Yeah, so it was very Like there was mercy and forgiveness and grace, but like if you broke a cardinal rule or if you just were gonna be a knucklehead and do what you're gonna do, then you couldn't live there.

Speaker 1: 1:09:23

Yeah and even if you got dismissed and you had to go back, you could reapply. You know when it when a bed space came open, but yeah by the end of 1998, everybody wanted to be in our door. Our door was where it was, where it's happening, the everything was checking was safe, it was clean, it was nice.

Speaker 2: 1:09:42

We didn't even lock our doors, we didn't lock our boxes what like a contrast from what you're, what you just described, yeah, to what you walked into. An experienced day was crazy.

Speaker 1: 1:09:54

And so it wasn't prisoner for and was prison transformation and we know that Jesus is the one that did. He gets all the credit. But he used a lot of free world people and he used a lot of inmates and I got to be one of the inmates. That crazy I mean, but still to this day. We haven't said that in this episode, but we will. In closing the prison, commissioner came in, said I want one of these in every dorm in the state of Alabama. So now every dorm in the state of Alabama has a it's really neat.

Speaker 2: 1:10:22

Is it still called the honor dorm? Yeah?

Speaker 1: 1:10:23

well, some people call it the faith form, but it's. I'm officially called the honor dorm. That was what we came up with. That's the way I mean. It is honor you like, if you have honor to do it. But in the next episode we'll talk about how. You know, I got burnt out and then I started feeling under pressure and Just getting aggravated with everybody and the whole process and it seemed like a fight all the time and you miss your friend.

Speaker 2: 1:10:48

I.

Speaker 1: 1:10:49

Missed him at first, but you know, life goes on. Oh, he was one of those friends that he wasn't gonna stay disconnected like. He wrote me letters and pictures. I talked on the phone all the time. You know, sometimes I'll get aggravated, like he got on the radio show one time and we thought that was so neat. But then when I caught him the next day he was like what a beautiful, glorious manifestation of my faith. I was like, bro, I have faith too. It was just your time. But so cover house moved in the cell with me next episode we talked about you know the pressure I was under, stuff that was happening, and I kind of fell apart, had a little bit of a like a. I don't know if it's a nervous breakdown and emotional breakdown, but I did like I'm done with all this. But thankfully Jesus sent somebody there to help with that and that was where We'll talk about next episode.

Speaker 1: 1:11:46

Yes that was where, steve, my relationship with him really started awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:11:50

So, All right, can't wait, it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:11:53

Thanks for tuning in, guys. Don't forget about the for real. Real, we've been getting a lot of good feedback from that. You ain't thought some that's been fun. We're not talking about the real world. Yeah, that has been really fun.

Speaker 2: 1:12:05

You guys definitely need to check it out, I mean we definitely. It's talk about some things that I think are Most people can relate to, if not all. Yeah, all right, guys, thanks for listening. We'll see you soon. See you soon, bye.

Speaker 1: 1:12:19

Hey guys, thanks so much for tuning in to the straight out of prison podcast. For more exclusive content, head over to our website, team Jones co slash podcast. Yes, you can subscribe by clicking on the become a patron button.

Speaker 2: 1:12:32

And that's gonna get you access to our for real. Real, which is very different than the highlight real, some very juicy content there, good stuff, or you can look us up on.

Speaker 1: 1:12:40

Facebook and Instagram straight out of prison Podcast. Yes, that takes the story to a whole new level, where you can see some of the people that James talks about in his story and see some of the places that he's been.

Speaker 2: 1:12:55

I've been loving it and you know prison recipes.

Speaker 1: 1:13:00

Yeah, we'll see you soon guys.

Speaker 2: 1:13:02

Thanks, bye.