La Paz prison ministry began
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| Maria Saracho (left) shares a moment with Miguel Pacheco, once one of the most feared men in San Pedro Prison, and now a leader in the church she started there. La Paz, Bolivia. Photo: UBS/Larry Jerden (BOL01DJ-89) |
By Larry Jerden, UBS Photojournalist
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Maria Saracho believes that God sometimes speaks to her in dreams. At other times, he simply opens doors to provide whatever is necessary to answer her prayers. In her life, she says, he has done both – and the result has been her ministry in some of the toughest prisons in Bolivia, where she moves easily in what most would consider to be a man’s world.
Several people help Ms Saracho in her work, including Christina Carrilla, the Bolivian Bible Society’s O-21 promoter. And the Bible Society Scriptures which she uses – in both printed and audio formats – have changed the lives of dozens of hardened criminals.
Jail
It is only six years since she herself received Jesus as her Saviour, and she immediately asked him how she could serve him. “God answered me in a dream,” she said. “In the dream I was in jail and I was feeling a lot of pain.”
Confused by this, she asked her pastor about it. He thought the dream was indeed the answer to her question, and that God wanted her in prison ministry.
After a week of praying and fasting, Ms Saracho had another dream. This time she saw her grandson in jail. Again, she went to her pastor, who said her grandson was to be her partner in the ministry.
Rapport
“But he’s too little to lead,” she told the pastor. “He’s only five years old!” Later, when she took the little boy into the prison with her, she found that the youngster had a special rapport with the inmates and that he touched their lives in a way even she could not.
“I saw that the Lord was using him,” she recalls. “They would give him notes asking him to pray for them.”
Today, she has others helping her, women from outside the prison and some of the prisoners themselves. And although she has never been ordained, many of the inmates regard her as their pastor.
“They know me,” she says. “I can go in and out freely. They also know me through my daily radio programme. Through my ministry I am ‘one of them’.”
An example of the acceptance she finds came when there was a ‘strike’ among the inmates. In protest against new laws which they felt were unfair, the prisoners refused to allow anyone to leave the prison. Accordingly, the police refused to allow anyone to enter.
“I had a service of baptism that day,” Ms Saracho says, “and I had been shopping for food to serve after the service. One of the guards saw me with a man carrying all that stuff, but just waved me through and said ‘OK, it’s the sister.’
“‘But what about the man,’
another asked. I said, ‘It’s OK, he is with me.’”
When they got inside, the inmates asked her how she managed to get in.
Acceptance
“I walked through the gate,” she replied. That kind of acceptance is more important to her than formal ‘credentials’. “I may never have been formally ordained,” she says, “but I serve the Lord in the morning, evening, and night.”
Ms Saracho and her helpers take Bible Society Scripture tapes like Good News at Work and Good News for the Family to the four prisons in La Paz.
“They not only bless the inmates, they bless the guards, too,” she says. “Many come to the services in the prison after receiving the tapes.”
In the San Pedro Prison, Ms Saracho gave out 1,600 Scripture tapes to inmates, 210 tapes to the police and 500 tapes to the inmates’ children – of whom there are many.
“Eighty per cent of the prisoners who have received the cassettes have become Christians,” she says. “Of those, 20 per cent have been released from prison, and that shows that the Lord can do miracles. For instance, some of the prisoners with 30-year sentences were released after two years!” The tapes are especially prized by those who remain inside.
“Some inmates tell me that if they had received the tapes before they committed their crimes, they would not be in prison today,” she says.
“They have played them again and again to review the message and stop themselves feeling alone. They also use them in prison services. One tough prisoner put them in the only stereo in the prison and played them so everybody had to listen. He had just become a Christian and he was already doing his ministry!”
That inmate, Miguel Pacheco, was one of the most violent criminals in the prison (see related item). “He was on drugs all the time and was always armed,” Ms Saracho says. “He was never without his blades and chains.
“He had been in prison 11 years and he accepted Christ during an evangelistic campaign, but the Scripture tapes confirmed to him that he should receive the Lord.” Through his testimony, she adds, a great number inmates have become Christians.
Big change
A couple of years ago the prisoners in one section held a riot and the guards refused to go in.
“But we went in,” says Ms Saracho. “We worked with the Scripture tapes and several men came to the Lord. Now there is much less violence and drug abuse. The Lord took this place and since then we’ve seen a big change.”
In addition to the spiritual needs, of course, the inmates have many practical needs, and Ms Saracho does what she can to meet them.
“I bought a cell inside the prison to start a bakery to support the children and families on the outside,” she says. “And the inmates have medical problems – TB, alcoholism etc. I am one of very few who help them. There is one physician and one dentist. The doctor charges only for medicines, but he has given me a box of samples. The dentist, a Christian, is willing to work three days a week, but we need equipment for her.”
Perhaps the crowning glory of Ms Saracho’s work is the small evangelical church in the prison. Built by the inmates themselves, it was a project that layman Eugenio Quisbert wanted to be a part of the minute he heard about it on Ms Saracho’s radio programme.
Needed cement
“She was asking for materials to build a church in the prison, so I got in touch with the radio station,” he says. “She told me that they needed cement. I told her I only had enough money for one bag of cement and five bags of stucco, but that I would give it to her.”
Venturing inside the prison to deliver his cement, he was unprepared for what he saw there.
“When I saw the men working on the church I started crying,” he says. “I was so happy to see what the Lord was doing. After that I became a regular visitor to the little church.”
Mr Quisbert notes, however, that “sometimes
it is hard to get a Bible.”
Ms Saracho echoes that, explaining that she has only 10 large-print
Bibles, which many of the men need, and 60 to 70 come to the little
‘church behind bars’ every day.
Grateful
That is why Ms Saracho is so grateful to the Bible Society – and to UBS and O-21 – for helping provide the tapes and printed Scriptures which help make her ministry possible.
“The Bible Society has been a blessing
to me. We can get Scriptures there at lower prices than other places.
I am a retired secretary, using my own funds. I have 1,650 ‘kids’
here – and they all call me ‘mama’.”