heart to heart

Freedom in prison? Now there’s something you don’t often hear about. People are quick to be critical about prison and those incarcerated in them and how sentences are too short, but what I am telling you is that God is on the move in our prisons setting captives free.

I worked for 8 years at HMP Send in Surrey in a team of drugs workers (for most of those years as a Senior Practitioner with the NHS) helping women prisoners who had drug dependencies; when I say drug dependency I mean very serious addictions- users spending thousands of pounds to feed veracious appetites to mostly crack cocaine, alcohol and heroin. The thing about addiction, any addiction, be it to drugs, drink, nicotine, sex, etc, it takes everything and is a hard slave master; addiction actually derives from a word meaning ‘a debt that cannot be paid’. How true that is. I saw many lives that had crashed on the shores of the criminal justice system, some were able to turn their lives around in prison and in fact two women I still have contact with are studying for degrees in order to help others with addictions. Other clients I worked with allowed the addiction to totally destroy them and some died from overdoses upon release or took their own lives in prison. Working with people suffering with addictions is tough as it’s full of potential and actual disappointment, but every now and then the few successes make the job worthwhile.

I left my work at HMP Send in Dec 2007 due to wanting to spend more time with my daughter Ruth and also because I felt God wanted me to pursue my ministry. A prophetic word from John Mark Pool that I had read talked about stepping out of comfort zones to go through gates, and I just KNEW this was God speaking to me. Since 1989 I have had a word over my life from Isaiah 62:10 that I only began to see come into fruition 11 years later. Leaving work meant I could do whatever it was God wanted me to do in relation to this word and I knew it had something still to do with prison and people with addictions.

Not long after leaving work a door opened back at HMP Send to go in with a team as visitors to worship with and minister to some of the women. At the first meeting we held there were only a few women, six or seven, but there was clearly a hunger for God; when I asked those attending if they wanted prayer for anything they all came forward. Since then we have gone in twice more and each visit has seen an increase in power and numbers attending. On the second visit in July we saw one lady instantly healed from a shoulder injury and prayed and prophesied over others. Our most recent visit in September saw two more healings, one an instant healing from knee problems, and more words for people attending. Best of all though we saw a young lady come forward to give her life to Jesus! She went away with a big beaming smile and a Bible. The worship was wonderful and could have just gone on had we not had such restrictions on our time (due to prison core hours).
We have another invitation to go back for a fourth visit in January '09 and are expectant of God to move even more powerfully. Please pray for us and for those women we are ministering to, they are hungry for God.

If you are interested in having Viv speak in your church or group or wish to hear more about ‘Through The Gates Ministries’ and the work Viv and others are doing then you can contact Viv Dawes at vivdawes@hotmail.com or visit her Facebook page by searching for Through The Gates Ministries on Facebook.