Day 3 - What fences can't do...

I’ve decided that I love prisons…I’m not sure why but maybe it’s the stories that echo in the enclosed walls because you know I’m a sucker for a story.  You may ask how many prisons I have been in and I’m not sure I could tell you.  You may recall that my favorite part of Ireland was a small prison where I heard all the stories of the inmates and stood by creepy wax figures of said inmates as the stories were told.

Well this time the prisoners I saw were not of the wax form but of the human form, but my favorite prisoner  I “met” was on the van ride over to the prison.  He is dead but his story lived on…

Mam Gwen (the pastor to the Badjao village and the District Superintendent of the AG in Palawan) was sitting in the front seat and having a conversation with the missionary sitting beside me.  It was one of those insignificant conversations in which I could look at the scenery and let my mind wander until…

My ears perked up and I asked Mam Gwen to repeat herself.  She did.

“My father grew up in this penal colony…”

Hang on…grew up??

“Yes, children lived with their parents in the penal colony back then…My grandfather was the prisoner…”

But why?

“…before he went to prison he heard a knock at his door one night and two strangers asked for a place to sleep that night.  He said yes.  The next morning he woke up and they were gone along with his caribou.”

Oh no…what did he do?

“He grabbed his gun and chased after them.  When he found them, he killed them both.  That’s how he ended up in the penal colony.”

So many questions…like how in the world did Jesus redeem this story.  We were on the edge of our seats trying not to miss a word she said.

“My grandfather found Jesus in the penal colony and later my dad became a Christian too.  My father felt called to reach the lost so he began to preach and go to the mountain villages and walk up and down the mountains telling them about Jesus.  He is 84 today…It’s his birthday… and He still walks up and down the mountains telling people about Jesus.”

Breathe….what did I just hear…

So Mam Gwen’s story starts with a murderer…turned prisoner…turned minister…turned missionary…and on and on…and I could see why when we were with the Badjao she said to me as we walked along a dirt road that her heart is with the Badjoa.  “I’m the District Superintendent but that isn’t the job I want.  I am called to the Badjao.”   

…because in the marrow of her bones the lost, the last, and the least are her deepest love passed down through generations.  She’ll take the $200 a month missionary pay over anything else to be among the Badjao.  She’ll live just outside the Badjao village to be with the Badjao.  She’ll sit on the back of a motorcycle over bumpy dirt roads to be with the Badjao.

The hated, despised, unwanted, dirty, impoverished Badjao…maybe because the Badjao village has a fence around it kind of like a prison and she knows what happens inside prisons.

As I passed through the gates of the prison it felt as if I entered a story that echoed off the metal gate, the dirt roads, and the fences that enclosed this “prison.”  As I stepped onto the concrete floors in the open air church, I could not contain what I felt as the “prisoners” shouted out with booming voices and with hands lifted high their praise.  “Did Mam Gwen’s grandfather stand here and worship Jesus.  Did her grandfather tell a fellow prisoner about Jesus in this very spot.  Did her grandfather find Jesus right here?”

All I could think was…”this is freedom”.  This is what heaven will be like.  People that know that they know that they know they are free…that they were once lost and now are found…that kind of free.  These men are more free and less burdened than those walking the streets or riding the trikes right outside the walls and these men are here as a part of God’s plan so that they, their children and their grandchildren can love the least of these inside and outside these walls.

The walls can not contain them because their prayers and praise are not bound by flimsy metal fences...or even the length of their lives…or even the depravity of what they have done…

Ah…that I would worship like them…and see that my God is not contained by fences…