263 PP

Dear Prayer Partners,

It is Sunday morning, 8:00 AM. In thirty minutes Jan and Lora will be here. I am so blessed with my faithful family and so many supportive and faithful friends. I feel so unworthy, and yet this morning I ask for prayer.

    I know many of you are and have been praying for me daily for my welfare and also for my released. I feel unworthy asking for more prayer, but that is what I am doing this morning. It's not that this is a terrible place. It's not  that my conditions are bad, actually they are very good. I do live in the very reality of sickness and death. On average five people die here every week. I'm not afraid of dying but for the sake of my family I don't want to die here.

    Almost every day I talk to someone who has found a new pain. Sometimes it's very soon. I see them in the nurses station and soon after that taken to the fifth floor (the place you don't want to go). It's just the reality of cancer. I'm told that pancreatic cancer is the painless cancer, but when it goes, it goes fast. It makes one really sensitive to new pains, or not even pain, each new feeling. I had a new feeling yesterday, I didn't mention it. I still have it today. Tomorrow it may be gone, but I know one day a feeling will come that won't go. I am content to have that in God's hands.

     So it is with a feeling of embarrassment, humility, unworthiness, that today I ask for special prayer for my early release. The time has passed since the paper left the Warden's desk and went to Washington. My fear is it might be buried under someone's pile who is gone on vacation or out on maternity leave or something like that. It was delayed here for three weeks for just that reason.

     I feel that this week more than ever before is the time for intense prayer for me. This week the order should come. I ask that God's hand would move on it this week, that he would touch an official's heart, give me favor in his/her eyes, sign the form and give us notice.

     I long for the time when we as prayer partners will gather together in Willmar E Free Church to give glory to God for the many wonderful things he has done. He has given me so much more than I deserve, I don't deserve you. Your encouragement has changed my life in prison compared to what it could have been. I realize that asking for early release is more than I deserve. I deserve to get out in October. I pray that God would do this in a way that he would be glorified in a remarkable way for all his deeds and gracious acts of mercy to us.

     So please pray this week, and I pray in your prayers, that your faith may be strengthened as well, that each prayer will rise as a pleasing aroma before our heavenly father, as we demonstrate that we love him, we demonstrate our dependence on him, He is the only one who makes the difference in our lives, that keeps me from being one of these guys here who knows they will spend the rest of their lives in prison. There are many like that. So this is what is hard:

   God has given me favor - I ask for more.
  God has given me faith - I ask for more.
 God has preserved my life - I ask for more.
  God has given me freedom (a measure) I ask for more.

I am unworthy, yet I ask for more. How can I praise him in an appropriate way? I am a debtor, unable to pay him or return his favors. I only receive them and say thank you.

Thank you Jesus, for receiving me, holding me in your hand, and never letting me go. Amen
Bob