Not much has happened the past two weeks at juvee. I don't feel that the guys as a whole have been as interested as they were in the past regarding what was being taught. There are some exceptions to this, however. Last week there were two new guys who had a lot of really good questions regarding the Bible, Muslims, and Jehova's Witnesses. They seemed pretty interested and one of them even said that he was "starting to believe what we were saying", his words, not mine. It's also comforting to see that M is opening up more and more. He no longer sits in the corner silent and rolls his eyes when I talk, but now actually talks and jokes around a little, though the rolling of the eyes is ever present. It was also cool to see that we had a lot of new volunteers yesterday. Normally, it tends to be about five of us going in there. Last night I think we had ten. They were really excited about what they saw there, and all seemed eager to come back.
Despite the normality of the past two weeks, there was something new that kind of (more like a lot of) bothered me. While the leader of the group was going over some basic rules with the new volunteers, I heard one that I had not heard before and sounded like somewhat recent addition to the list of don'ts. As of last night, we are no longer allowed to "peer pressure" the guys. It doesn't take a lot of complex thought to figure out what this means. We can teach the Bible all we want, but when it comes down to giving an invitation, the message is pretty clear, don't do it. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this. I guess the only thing that I can do is pray and keep on doing what I'm doing. It makes for a somewhat confusing situation.
On a side note, and possibly more exciting as well, there is something truly amazing that's happened within the past week. One of my friends from work here at school has recently been battling his third bout of cancer, all three bouts being different kinds, the most recent bout being a fight with colon cancer. Anyway, as he went to the doctor within the past week getting ready to begin a round of some pretty serious chemo, he went in for another routine MRI. When the test results came back the doctors, as well as my friend, were shocked to find that there was nothing on the MRI. The cancer was no longer there where it had been! It was gone! I talked with him tonight about it, and he was extremely grateful, as am I. I'm excited to be able to tell the juvee guys next week. Maybe I can get him to come in and tell the story himself...
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