Wednesday, April 16, 2008


You want how many cookies?

Twenty nine thousand, give or take a few dozen. Our Upper Arlington Lutheran Kairos Prison Team will be going to the Marion Correctional Institution April 24-27 for a Christian Renewal Week-end, and each team brings their own cookies--28,800. Usually, we need only 10,000-12,000, but we have so many members on the team for this week-end, we need a lot of cookies. So I'm baking--which is pretty unusual for me. I've made eight twelve dozen brownies (with a little help from Duncan Hines), some with chocolate chips, because there's nothing like chocolate to say, "love." And that's what the cookies are for--tangible evidence of God's love for a sinner in a batch of homemade cookies or brownies. The freezers at the church are probably full--it's hard to find room for that many cookies. A team member is using our garage refrigerator.

To learn more about the program go to www.ualc.org/cookies

Many of the men reached by Kairos Renewal will never be released into society, but many will--and our UALC men are committed to work with them then too, to ease them back into employment and their families.

"Faith-based programs that start in prison and continue after sentences have been served can produce meaningful outcomes when they offer the mentoring, guidance, and hope needed to face a future often marked by social exclusion and fear of the unknown." also, "Working with prisoners before they are released can increase the chances of successful reentry." http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cb_51.htm

1 comment:

Three Score and Ten or more said...

My son was born in Marion, Illinois, and as a doctoral student at Southern Illinois University, I taught classes for a semester or so at Marion. Generally good students though I hated the process of going in and going out. The guards didn't even trust college teachers.