Cape Vincent, NY
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This report comes from team leader Scott with our team in Watertown, NY:
It was a great and productive three-day retreat for the prisoners AND for the volunteers. We provided a historical timeline of the Catholic Church to the prisoners, showing a direct narrow line path from Jesus Christ in 33 AD to the present, along with all of the spider web paths of other religions and versions of Christianity. Hopefully this hit home for some of them.
The Priest who came with us was Fr. Jay Kumar, MSC (Missionaries of the Sacred Heart) and he did a wonderful job with mass in the prison and confession. His speech and sermons were also great and relatable. We had prisoners who were Protestant, Baptist, Non-denominational, and “spiritual” make their confessions for the first time in their entire lives. We even had some Catholics who confessed for the first time in decades and were able to receive communion for the first time since they were children living in places like South America. The prisoners went up one by one and told all of us just how their confessions went, and the impact Fr. Jay had upon them. It literally ignited their faith, as some had his prayer shawl cast over their heads along with his hand over their forehead pouring out blessings upon them after confession.
There has also been a sparked interest in vocations. A few men were interested in entering first order religious monasteries in their respective hometowns. We provided them local information on this so they can reach out to them. One person explained how his secular life never panned out well for him and how the influences of alcohol in the world and money always brought him to jail or in trouble with family. Now that there is a possibility he can return to the world and completely focus on the Lord with a community of like-minded men in a religious order, it appears all the lights came on in his eyes now that he discovered there is a different way. This young man is also single with no children and could one day become a Priest, so please, pray for Nick from Buffalo to draw closer to the Lord through a religious community when he is released in the next coming months! Please pray for all the men we met!
Praised be Jesus Christ!