Inside Out: Transforming Lives Through Love
Third of a three-part series written by Glenda Meekins for the Florida Catholic “When someone goes to jail, most people don’t tell anybody. They don’t really talk about it,” says Gina Brockmeyer, program coordinator of Women’s Ministries at Kairos Prison Ministry International, Inc., DeBary. Laura Roll was one of those people. Working in law enforcement when her son was first incarcerated, there was no one to talk to about what she was going through. It was lonely and stressful. When she registered at Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Winter Park, she checked the box under interests that listed “Prison Ministry”. The next thing she knew, she had been invited to a Kairos Outside weekend. “I was trying to figure out if I really wanted to do this,” she recalled. After driving to check out the location, she drove around, trying to put off actually attending. Although nervous, she finally parked and went inside. “Well, it was the best decision I made,” she says as she looks back at that day more than 15 years ago. “They showed me that it was nothing that I did. I didn’t put my son in jail or in prison. It was his choices.” Roll’s story is played out over and over with thousands of Kairos Outside “Guests”, women with incarcerated loved ones who attend retreats designed to help them find peace, mend relationships and support their loved ones on the inside. The retreat weekends are different than those for Kairos Inside (incarcerated men and women) or Torch (incarcerated youth) because they meet outside of the prison setting, in hotels, camps and retreat centers. Plus, former women inmates are also welcome. “Kairos Outside teams really have to work to get guests – they don’t have the ‘captive’ audience that Kairos Inside and Kairos
