Recently I traveled to Mississippi to train 80 men and women inmates at the invitation of Mr. Burl Cain. Cain is the former warden at Angola state prison and is now the Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He invited me to train inmate seminary graduates and students in their three major prisons in how to use the Malachi Dads and Hannah’s Gift curriculum.
One of the many pure delights during my time in Mississippi was seeing and meeting up with men who were some of the first Malachi Dads at Angola and now, by God’s grace, they are chaplains in several of the Mississippi prisons. These are men who many of you prayed for during the early days of Malachi Dads. Now they are free and doing God’s work ministering to inmates in Mississippi and will soon be supervising the teaching of God’s Word through the Malachi Dads and Hannah’s Gift programs in most of the state prisons in Mississippi. Only God.
One of those men, head chaplain Ron Olivier, graduated from Angola’s prison seminary in 2005. Paroled in 2018 and subsequently recruited by Cain to work as head chaplain at Parchman, Olivier pastored an inmate church at Angola’s Camp C for 15 years.
As reported in The Religious Freedom Initiative, “In order to hire Olivier, Cain boldly changed the rules to allow convicted felons to work in the prison. “But who better?” Cain asks. “These men have literally saved people’s lives. This is the A-team.”
Just as former drug addicts make the best addiction counselors, Angola’s former Inmate Ministers possess what Cain calls “the real credentials–actual life experience in successfully facing the challenges of prison.”
Pray for the transformation of many through the Gospel of Christ using broken people like each of us. Thanks for your prayers and all your wonderful support.
Mike Broyles, Executive Director
Lifeline Global Ministries
