WAFB Channel 9, Baton Rouge, LA |Teaching prisoners the meaning of forgiveness

Teaching prisoners the meaning of forgiveness

By Tyana Williams - bio | email

ST. GABRIEL, LA (WAFB) - A Virginia based minister carried her message to Louisiana this weekend.  Ruth Graham, daughter of evangelist Billy Graham, was invited by Angola Warden Burl Cain.  Her group, "Ruth Graham and Friends" usually holds workshops at church, but this is the first time they've traveled to a prison.  She says their message applies to everyone.

Behind a fence laced with barbed wire sits a white church, at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women.  Inside are 200 of the prisons 1,000 member population.

"We want to bring the message of God's love and grace to all that will listen," says Ruth Graham.

At some points, you can hear some agreeing with Graham.  Some raise a hand.  At one point, there is clapping.  Some take notes, some just listening as Minister Ruth Graham teaches them about forgiveness.  Graham uses examples from her own life to drive the point home.  In this case, it is her divorce from her first husband, who she says was unfaithful.

"I have issues. You have issues. Everybody has issues.  And we've been dragging them around for a long time," she tells them.

It's a message you might expect from the outside, to people who have been hurt by the women who live within the cement confines.  But Graham says these women need to learn to forgive themselves and their situations.

"No one is abandoned.  No one is forgotten.  Everybody has a purpose, every life has a purpose and that's what we wanted to to communicate."

While the workshop is spiritually based, Graham says it is also to remind the inmates they have not been overlooked.  Friday, she and her husband toured the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.  Walking the halls of death row, praying with inmates who in Graham's words will probably see heaven before she will.  It is a feeling she says she can't put into words.

"One of the inmates on death row sang to us, 'I need thee every hour'.  They gave us crosses they made there.  Very meaningful, so we were blessed.  Just want to let them know they were not alone."

The message of forgiveness, she says is an issue we all deal with.  But from behind the gates where justice has spoken, forgiveness may be the only way they will feel free.

Graham will speak at Sunday's prison service before returning to her home.  She says she feels a special connection to Angola.  Both her parents coffins were made at the prison.

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