Yeah, my name’s Dana Stevens. My inmate number is 228599. I’m calling from Kinross Correctional Facility in Chippewa, in Michigan.
And being a preacher, I’ve been locked up for the past 31 years and, you know, living a dark life out there–I deserve everything I got, and they gave me life in prison. But when guys complain up in here and, you know, prison is a place where a lot of guys get their lives right, but there are a lot of people who complain.
And I told a story once in church about a wife–or a mother–who told her daughter to get ready to go to school, and the daughter just yelled and threw her bowl of cereal across the room. And her mother said, “You know, because you did that, you’re gonna spend the next two weeks on punishment: no TV, no radio, no phone, no nothing, and you’re gonna sit in that corner for two hours every day and stare at the wall.”
The grandfather hears this from the back room and he just–he’s a little sighing for his granddaughter, so while they’re gone, he actually goes over to that wall where he knows his granddaughter’s going to sit for two hours and he starts painting all these different cartoon characters, and all these fantasy characters, and butterflies, and everything that he knows his granddaughter likes, so that, to her surprise, when she comes and has to sit in that corner, she kind of has a mural of an amazing adventure all over the wall that she could kind of mentally escape from and have a bit of enjoyment, so to speak, in the midst of her punishment.
And I think about stuff like that, where we get to get our lives together if we make those right choices. And for me personally, it’s like, “Wow, man, I’ve been in here for 31 years. I’m preaching. I’m teaching. Every prison I go to, I get to bring the gospel of Christ to people.” And I’ve met people, and I’ve done some things that I never thought I could be able to do. And it’s just awesome.
And more importantly, guys go home and they write me on JPay and tell me they’re doing a good job, and they’re getting their life together and they’re not coming back to prison. And those kind of things really make sense to me. And I love what I get to do and I love to connect with people. And I believe that God’s really done a work in my life, and I wanna meet more people.
And I have a book on Barnes & Noble called Satan’s U-Turns by Flex Stevens. It’s my nickname, Flex Stevens. And just contact me on JPay, and see the name Dana Stevens, and get ahold of me, ’cause I’d like to tell you more. And God bless everybody and thank you for the opportunity.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
