Mzuzu Central Prison is in the city and housed 344 prisoners today, including: 14 mothers, 12 juvenials, 3 young children, and 7 AIDS patients (unattended and segregated from the rest).
Josie, Clarissa and Moniqe had the incredible opportunity to encourage the women prisoners, and the Don and I shared the Good News with the male prisoners, including gifts of soup, soap and a guitar.
Yesterday we had visited the inmates, preached, distributed hygiene kits, and left them with a guitar (requested from our last visit in January).
On the West side of Lake Malawi is a Bay, and on the Bay is a prison with a beautiful view of the Lake. Inside were 100 male prisoners who we visited and brought them gifts of hope and encouragement in the form of 'soup', 'soap' and 'solidarity.'
We had to be a little sexist today and keep the girls in the background in the all male prison. The guards kept a watchful eye, but we all were amazed that the prisoners were not inclined to riot, take hostages or reject our presence. On the contrary, our visit was the social event of the year.
Don preached from John 6 about the feeding of the 5k, Dennis brought greetings, Trinity demonstrated how to use the donated tooth brushes and tooth pastes, and I served as emcee and facilitator of an incredible hour of sharing with these inmates. We sang, they sang, we passed out bars of soap--communion style. They had our nutritional soup to eat for lunch, wanted us to bring more. As Don said, "it doesn't get any better than this." Even in church.
