Enjoying the fellowship on Thursday morning are, from left to right, Frank Blow, Dr. Michael Carney, Guenter Maresch, and Betsy Barfield.
Always, the stories move the audience to one degree or another; and not infrequently, they inspire an individual member to want to share his or her own story of trial and spiritual reawakening with the group. So it was that Chris Landrum, 37 and the warden at the Jefferson Correctional Institution (JCI) since November 2009, became inspired by the testimonials of two earlier speakers and volunteered to share his own story at the prayer breakfast on Thursday morning, March 5, at the fellowship hall of First Baptist Church.
A native of Cross City whose family came to Florida from Mississippi in 1954 to work in the turpentine industry, Landrum said he worshipped his grandparents, and in particular his grandfather, whom he called "the rock in my life". Besides being a turpentine worker, Landrum said his grandfather worked part time at the prison; and his grandmother was a seamstress whose home was a popular gathering place for the sew and gossip crowd.
Being the oldest of the grandchildren living in town, Landrum said he was his "granny's pet". Times when he wasn't feeling well, Landrum said his grandmother would pick him up from school and allow him to spend the day with her. Landrum fondly recalled those idyllic days, lying in bed listening to the visitors coming and going and the drone of conversation and the wonderful aromas of food cooking in the kitchen. His grandmother would always have dinner ready for the grandfather when the latter arrived home from work evenings and the family would sit around the table and eat together, Landrum said.
Then it happened in 1982 when he was in sixth grade that his grandfather came home from work one evening and dinner was ready and waiting as usual but his grandmother was asleep in the bed, which was highly unusual. His grandmother, it turned out, had suffered a brain hemorrhage and was in a coma.
This was near Christmastime. Landrum said he and his family prayed that his grandmother would get better but she remained in a coma and the situation seemed pretty hopeless. Then Christmas Day, his mother received a telephone call saying that the grandmother had awakened and was up and about as if nothing had happened.
"The Lord must have touched her," Landrum said. "She woke up that morning like she hadn't missed a beat."
Landrum said he and the family got to spend a wonderful Christmas Day with his grandmother and the children gave her the memory book that they had made for her and everyone had a good time, including the grandmother, who got to eat butterscotch candy and watch the Lawrence Welk Show.
"You know that special smell that grandmothers have," Landrum said, recalling the occasion. "You never forget that smell.
He said he and the rest of his family went home the next day thinking everything was all right and then his grandmother went back into a coma and she never awoke again.
"I can tell you that Jesus touched her in answer to our prayers," Landrum said. "He gave us one more Christmas with our granny."
The second part of his story Landrum said he had never before shared with anyone outside his immediate family and he wondered why he was sharing it with a group of strangers now. It was a darker tale of youthful indiscretion and its consequences, followed by the loss of his mother under circumstances that left him confused, angry and doubtful of God's goodness and beneficence.
"I was angry at the world," Landrum said. "I was working hard (he had started working at the prison at age 19), but spiritually I was in a slumber. Spiritually, I was dead and didn't realize it. If you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus, you won't prevail. I was young and stupid and hardheaded."
He credits his grandfather with helping turn him around. His grandfather talked to him, Landrum said. His grandfather told him that he too had been hurt and tested by life, but one couldn't give up on life or give up on the Lord.
"Our plans are written in pencil, but God's are written in permanent ink," Landrum said. "Sometimes we go through tough times, but it's only the Lord testing us. I started going to church again and God sent me a wife who is now my rock .I have three wonderful children. I'm doing a lot better than I deserve. Where I work at the prison it's not always easy to be a Christian. Some of the prisoners will test your faith. But we try to prevail and do our best."
Following the presentation, Gary Wright, the coordinator of the Monticello Business Community Prayer Breakfast, presented Landrum with a plaque inscribed with the Prisoner's Prayer, a rewrite by Carroll Lamb of Hanks Williams' famous song "Take These Chains From My Heart".
Lamb changed the words to reflect a more spiritual theme and sang the song at the commencement of the program on Thursday morning.
