Coffield Trip Summary

It is always good to go to the Coffield Trusty camp. The staff is always eager to have us and always helpful. We are especially grateful to Ms. Jones and Lt. Shock for their hard work and willingness to let us come inside. This year there were many new faces as the unit has seen significant turnover since our last trip. What a great opportunity to share the Gospel and God’s love with a new group. We also saw a few old friends and enjoyed seeing their familiar smiles.

We left Tyler around 7:30 and arrived at the unit around 8:30am. As always at a Trusty camp, the check-in process is much faster and we were out on the field playing by 9:00am for the National Anthem (as sung by an inmate). We like to get on the field as quickly as possible, so after a quick warmup, we started Game 1 against the “A” team. Despite our best efforts, we lost in Game 1 to the home team by one run. After this game, we realized that our competition at Coffield would be better than usual. This brought a new intensity to the rest of the day as we attempted to regain our dominance and the inmates attempted to capitalize on their success.

We then played another 2 games before lunch (one against the “B” team and a rematch against the “A” team) and started to really play well. We won both games by big margins behind the pitching of Johnny Smallwood and the long blasts of Justin Stafford and Mark Whiteland (the bash brothers). Our defense also started clicking and we eliminated the mistakes that hampered us in Game 1. Also between the morning games, JD Weathers spoke about God’s power and used the story of Job to give encouragement when circumstances seem unjust. JD shared God’s response to Job’s questions and how God’s ways are higher than ours and he always acts in the best interest of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

We then took a short break to eat some lunch. As usual we devoured the hamburgers and home-made French fries. Some people even had double meat burgers! After lunch we headed back out to play several more games, winning them all. Chad Gentry shared the Good News/Bad News handout and explained how we are all guilty before a righteous Judge. He asked everyone to consider the condition of their heart as compared to God’s perfect law. We had several responses to the message and enlisted Bible study enrollees. Jeff Coke led the “Family Prayer” to end the day and prayed for the families of the inmates. He prayed that God would strengthen the relationships between inmates and their families and for God to repair any broken relationships.

We really are thankful for our relationship with the Coffield unit. We hope to continue going back and ministering there. We have 4-5 more trips remaining this year and we are excited about the new season.