by Alan Langstaff

In the last Langstaff Letter, I talked about going into prisons to visit inmates and how Christ commanded us to do that very thing. We remember that Christ himself declared, “I was a prisoner and you came to visit me.” I received a number of interesting responses, some of which I want to share with you.

IRISH JOHNNY

One of the main parts of last week’s Langstaff Letter was to share the story of my involvement with “Irish Johnny” in a maximum security prison in Mansfield, Ohio, where he had been an inmate for over 30 years.

I went back and looked over my file of my contacts with Irish Johnny, and I discovered this note he sent to me after he received parole in 2018:

“I love the Langstaff Letter, it was a tremendous source of wisdom and encouragement while I was incarcerated and has continued to be a major blessing to me since my release nearly 14 months ago. I love Dr. Alan and Dorothy and thank the Lord for placing them in my life.”

It is a blessing to know that the Langstaff Letters have been an encouragement to Irish Johnny.

In response to last week’s Langstaff Letter, he wrote me an update on what has been happening in his life. Here it is:

“I have been a spokesman for Prison Fellowship at their Hope Events in Ohio Prisons for the past two years. I have also been their keynote speaker at their Prison Fellowship Academy Graduations for the past couple of years. Grafton Correctional Institution is hosting an event next Thursday and has asked me to speak at this event. They have a program called, The Normalcy Program, where they prepare men for reintegration back into society. They have also invited the Prison Fellowship Academy members to this event. It is not specifically a “Faith Based” event, but I can’t tell my story without talking about Jesus, so I am looking forward to it!…

Thank you for all the wisdom and encouragement you have shared with me throughout the years! Especially when “you visited me in prison!” I love you Doc! And I thank the Lord for you!

Forever,
Irish Johnny”

WHY ONE PASTOR LOVES PRISONERS

A friend of mine, Pastor Phil Roland from Pennsylvania, wrote to me about his own experience as a self-appointed halfway house chaplain.

“When we moved into our present residence in 1992, I was totally unaware that we were less than 200 yards from a local prison Halfway House. My father who was a newspaper printer spent 22 months in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas for reproducing paper money on a Multilith Offset Printing Press. Dad used the “Play Money” as a gag for his Friday night poker games with his friends.

One of Dad’s poker friends accidentally left a phony bill in his suit pocket when it went to the cleaners. The dry cleaner was suspicious and called the IRS. The local police arrested my dad. He was tried in a federal court on counterfeiting charges and taken off to Leavenworth. The government people were very sensitive and over-reactive about the new offset printing innovations. They had zero tolerance for skilled printers reproducing US currency.

I was eight years old at the time and the oldest of four children. …

After dad’s release he moved us out of the one-room rented house we lived in for those 22 months. At 10 years of age I began my printer’s apprenticeship under my dad’s training in a country newspaper in Friona, Texas. We had my dad for another four years until he was killed in a plane crash. I was 14 and my father was 34. By this time there was five of us and we went on in life without my talented, reckless and unstable father. The unresolved grief of his violent death stayed with me and my family for the decades yet to come.

… This early life experience with my father’s incarceration and its effect on my family gave me a special empathy for prisoners.”

WORKHOUSE BLUES

Just recently, I was talking to a man who had ended up in a county prison where he wrote about his Deliverance from “workhouse blues.”

“In this empty, lonely darkness when the lights are always on… Cold concrete floors, stainless toilet, where the “stainless” is all gone. In your 10X8 you vegetate as each moment drags so long and in your insane imaginings thinking, wondering how so many have gone so very wrong. And every day the Bulls cry out that same sadistic, painful cull, “Spread you feet, hands up on the wall, lift your nuts you piece of s**t, we want to see it all.” And once again your humanity is ever being mauled! Now don’t look to Man or society to right these many wrongs, for they too also are so broken and cannot, will not hear your mornful song… So if my friend or stranger find yourself in some similar agony, whether on your deck drinking brewskies or in a real jailhouse block like me, you might not be as “free” as you think now listen closely to me.

I am talking about a freedom that transcends this present reality. A peace in your heart, mind and soul, no matter where you be.

So I’ve found this night a power, a friend to really set me free, by putting my life in the Man hung on that Tree.

So, now I lay me down to sleep here in my private cell knowing that sweet Jesus has delivered me from this hell.”

CLOSING THOUGHT

The last words of the last article: “So, now I lay me down to sleep here in my private cell knowing that sweet Jesus has delivered me from this hell.”

Next week, we will conclude this series with a look at how God uses “imprisonment” for His purpose and for His glory.

P.S.

Irish Johnny spent half his life in prison. A former high ranking member of the largest most violent gang in the United States Prison System. Johnny was deemed one of “the worst of the worst” by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. There he had a spiritual encounter in a solitary confinement cell in a maximum security facility in Ohio that miraculously changed him.

If God can change a man like Irish Johnny He can change you too.