By Rachel Ortego, Regional Reporter
BASILE – When Johney Jeans, a member of First Baptist Basile, walked into the local prison one Monday night to share God’s word, he was not surprised when the Holy Spirit led him to turn over the pulpit that night to his partner, Kent Aguillard, a member of First Baptist Eunice.
What really “threw him for a loop,” Jeans said, was when a prisoner walked up to him and asked if he was a preacher or pastor, then left and returned with a blind man who wanted to talk to Jeans privately.
“The prisoner came back to me with a blind man who asked if he could speak to me in secret. He then asked, ‘What do I have to do to convert to Christianity?’ I questioned him about his beliefs and led him in the sinner’s prayer,” Jeans said. He then told me, ‘I am a Palestinian Muslim. I cannot tell anyone my full name or I will be killed.’”
A week after he made his profession of faith in Jesus Christ, the Muslim was returned as part of routine deportation to his home country.
“Oh, I tell you it was unbelievable to experience this,” Jeans said. “I relate it to Phillip preaching that revival in Antioch. I’m not a preacher or pastor, I’m just a layman, and if I had been so prideful as to not give up my place to lead devotions that night, I would have missed this.”
Both Jeans and Aguillard are involved in a prison ministry that is unique because they are witnessing and delivering Bibles weekly to detainees being held by the South Louisiana Correctional Center’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the tiny rural town of Basile, La.
The window of time to get the message of salvation is very short. Detainees are immigrants whose paperwork is not current for them to remain in the United States. They may only be at the prison for a few weeks before being deported to their home country.
“This is a mission field right here in our back yard,” Jeans said. “Over the last 4 ½ years we’ve seen over 100 professions of faith per year and over 20,000 Bibles given out.”
When asked how they can make such an impact in such a short time the men replied, “It’s not rocket science. We give them pure gospel. They get a lot of doctrine from different religious sources. We tell them the Son of God was singled out to bear the cost of their sin debt.
“We share with them the purity of the gospel,” Aguillard said, “and the work in them is totally up to the Holy Spirit. We tell them we are not here because we are good, but because God is good. This ministry is different in that we go every week as opposed to once a month, and the detainees are always very grateful. They are a very prayerful and reverent group.”
Jeans continued the conversation. “A lawyer and a principal could not have dreamed up in our wildest dreams that something like this would happen. The Lord said if you do what I send you to do, I’m going to bless you.” Jeans is a retired school principal and football coach and a member of First Baptist Basile, the church that started the prison ministry 20 years ago.
Aguillard, an attorney and member of First Eunice joined Jeans, and his wife Judy, in 2009 in the ministry at the correctional center where 75 to 90 ninety percent of the detainees do not speak English, but the men say the Lord always provides an interpreter.
“When I started going to the prison four years ago,” Aguillard said, “God clearly communicated to me that ‘you wanted a church full of Hispanics; I brought them to you. All you have to do is tell them what I tell you to tell them. Then I will send these missionaries home to their countries.’”
“Because we’re willing to go as in Acts 1:8 tell us, He brought Acts 1:8 to our door,” said Jeans. “We tell them they are either going to be firewood or a fruit tree. You’ll either burn or be used for the glory of God.” He was referring, he said, to Matthew 7:16-20. “The funny thing, also, is that my wife always thought she would be in women’s ministry. Instead, she is singing and giving her testimony in a men’s prison.”
“It’s clear to see that the detainees’ conversions are not ‘fire insurance,’” Aguillard said. “You just have to look in their faces and see. At one service the men started coming up without an altar call, weeping over their brokenness until the floor was wet. They don’t care who’s looking. I have never seen anything like that before.”
Though there are men of other races and nationalities in the prison, both men say the Hispanics are, by culture, deeply spiritual people. They sing hymns in Spanish, and arrive at the service early and are on their knees in prayer out loud as the other detainees arrive. Jeans said that Bibles distributed to English-speaking prisoners are often left behind; the Spanish-speaking take the Bibles with them.
Aguillard and Jeans say they encourage the new Christians to publically announce their salvation and stress that they find a Christian church when they go home and get plugged into it.
“They accept they are in here because they deserve it,” Jeans said. “This is no jailhouse religion. Most of them are so relieved to have found Christ before they go home. Some of them serve in the prison like pastors.”
Both men insist that they get none of the credit for the work at the prison: “God and Jesus the Christ get all the glory from this. We’re just sinners saved by grace.”
“I was going to help God,” Aguillard admitted, “but what I’ve experienced has humbled me because we know we’re not the ones responsible. It’s all totally up to the Holy Spirit. God sends you where He wants you to go to whomever He wants you to speak.”