Multiplying Impact

The most common response to the question ‘How have you been' is that we are busy. It can often be a throwaway line, but in this case, the last six months specifically, we have been swamped!

As the prison system emerged out of Covid-19 and Operation Foundation was invited back; we suddenly found ourselves swamped with opportunity and need. Our team and resources were stretched as we responded to what was placed in our hands.

Being busy is one thing, but could we be effective and have an impact amid these increased activity levels?

The Operation Foundation team are dedicated to the theme of ‘Making Him Known’, with the understanding that our character will speak louder than our words. We were now being asked to step up to levels of activity that a primary focus and attention to character could only support.

The team went from facilitating eighteen programs in the 3rd quarter of 2022 to fifty programs to 724 inmates in the 4th quarter of 2022, followed by fifty-one programs to 734 inmates in the 1st quarter of 2023. We have been busy!

Tracking the impact was equally important, and our team debriefs suddenly became holy ground. We evidenced the incredible strength of team witness, stories of inmates coming to tears of repentance and unfolding celebrations of hope, all beautifully woven through the activity.

Here is one message from the team.

A lot of hurt, pain and anger, and not forgetting SHAME, opened up during Trauma Healing. It has helped the brothers understand what trauma is and what responsible steps to take in the restoration process. Towards the end of our class today, there were a lot of questions and breakthroughs….

…and here is another one.

The classroom was packed, but still, they kept informing me that a friend wanted to join our class and asking if I could include his name as well; by the time True Identity started, there were around 23 men sitting in class. The True Identity sessions began to shake them a bit, and they also did some internal digging into who they truly were. Some of the brothers broke down and shared their life and plans before being sentenced. True Identity challenges them, and I could see them responding to the One knocking at the door of their hearts.

We have always counted it a sacred privilege to journey with the men and women in prison. To respond to the leap in activity, we have doubled down on our team training and development so that we can be confident that we are both having an impact and ‘Making Him Known’.

Below are the last two quarterly engagement snapshots and pictures of some of the team and guests at our recent OF Leadership Roundtable.

OF Team Retreat

While we have put effort to conducting our team meetings via zoom there is nothing like everyone in the same space. Team building takes a different dimension when we get to share the same space space rather than the same bandwidth.

The OF core leaders came together at the OF Ministry Centre at Navua on Sunday afternoon the 12th of March. Its been a while since we have been together like this and so while the next 3 days were full, Sunday evening was dedicated to a meal around the long table and catching up.

Each day had a rhythm of beginning in a time of early and extended prayer and closing with the same. Gabi Buli, our northern team leader creatively led this for us.

Our founder, Peter Schultz, led with the first devotion looking deeply into the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 4 and its application for us as the Operation Foundation team.

Hector Hatch (Deputy Principal - International School Suva ) then led us through a beautiful exposition of God’s heart for the vulnerable and children. One of our core requirements is to keep in compliance with our child protection and vulnerable persons policies and so following Hector we had Jill Schultz take us through the structured learning requirements to uphold our compliance.

Monday afternoon sessions kicked of with Major General (Retd) Ioane Naivalurua, the previous Corrections Commissioner (2006-2010) facilitating an open dialogue with the team. Mr Naivalurua had introduced Yellow Ribbon and so the team got to hear first hand the heart and motivation behind what is now Fiji’s leading movement of giving inmates a second chance. This was an inspiring session.

Jill Schultz then finished our day out with a practical counselling skills application on ‘reflective listening’. Amongst a lot of laughter as we tried this new skill out on each other there was a lot of learning.

Tuesday we were blessed to have Pastor Pio Tukana Nakesu (Namadi Heights Baptist Church & Associate Director for Langham South Pacific) stir our hearts with a tremendous our devotion before Semi Lutu, our western team leader, led us through a great exercise on what’s so important about OF’s six core values.

Dr Richard Beyer came spoke to the team about his 35 years of experience in agricultural and food technology community development across the Pacific. Richard has had long term success in developing small scale profitable and yet simple projects and this grabbed the team’s attention.

Peter Schultz then led an participatory session where we began filling the while board with OF’s past, present, and future. This became the reference point for everything that followed.

Tuesday afternoon the team from Hopes of Hope came and presented a session on self-awareness, vulnerability and empathy. Homes of Hope works exclusively with victims while we work with offenders and the sharing and following discussions between their experiences and ours was valuable learning.

Wednesday began with Pastor Mike McMillen sharing a devotion from Romans 12 before we headed into our long morning of strategic planning. Our plans, obstacles, capacity building, program development and case loads all became a place of discussion, prayer and planning.

By Wednesday afternoon our hearts, heads and appetites were full. There is nothing like being all together!

100+ Inmates

‘I am writing to say a big thank you,’ began the letter we recently received from an inmate who had completed an OF program. The team has worked with over 100 inmates weekly for the past nine months. The same group of inmates will cycle through around six OF programs during a specific quarter before being moved to the next stage.

That’s a lot of lives to be prayerful about and pour into. While our rehabilitation programs provide the framework for the interactions, each group is unique, and no week is ever the same.

The letter continued, ‘…by taking responsibility, accepting, admitting, confessing and repenting, I have begun the healing process. Thank you again for the opportunity to participate in this program. It has allowed me to self-reflect and see where I need to put effort into fixing and repairing, not only within myself but also with my family.’

The writer of the letter went on in to share his appreciation that the program was founded on biblical principles and scriptures that encouraged him to re-engage with the mercy and grace of God.

Allocating our resources and capacity for this ongoing demand is a critical focus. However, what also remains a priority is the team's professional development and their ability to maintain emotional and spiritual health.

This coming week the team are deployed across various correctional centres sharing the good news through our rehabilitation programs.

My Week in Prison

February is hot in Fiji, so facilitating Trauma Healing in a classroom with 14 men was draining and splendid.

It was an unusual class because of its age range. Twenty-two to seventy-two meant a diversity of experience, insights, and maturity contributed to some great discussion. At the outset, I’ve got to say that facilitating a group in prison is where I gain spiritual refreshment. However, as the team has grown and the frequency of programs increased, my time is taken up in encouraging, supervising, and making guest or gate-crashing appearances into the team member’s programs. Grabbing a week of my own to conduct a program was exceptional, and this week in Nasinu was just that.

Monday is always a settling-in day where they assess me, and I assess them. It’s not a Mexican standoff as much as it is a dance. Several men in this class worked with me in 2016 and 2017, so it wasn’t an icy start.

The first session of Trauma Healing is a dive into suffering and why we suffer. The whole concept of suffering is on-point for men in prison, and so it’s an easy place in which to get the discussion started. That begins to slow a bit when we start to look outwards at the suffering of others, but the whole session remains rich as we look at this through a cultural and biblical lens. What remains a mystery is that even though many of these men have been in prison for years and experienced and initiated suffering, it’s most often the first time they have openly discussed it.

As the week progresses, the vulnerability and discussions go deeper. Exploring suffering before moving on to heart wounds, to exploring the back story before prison. All are rich minefields to bring voice, pain, misconceptions, and insight. This is not a place or space for condemnation but to lead towards an openness where a conviction can begin its work.

What I love about facilitating a group in any of the ten programs we run is the one question that suddenly sends us in a different direction. It rapidly can become territory where there is no script, and at times, it feels like ‘buckle up’ and enjoy the ride.

We have one session we use across many of our programs called ‘the back wall of the soul’. This session has an impact that resonates with our men and women in prison. In our evaluations, this is the one session that becomes the sword of conviction. As the week progresses, we begin to find an acceptance not only for their wounds but also for the wounds they have inflicted on others. We symbolically take these wounds to the Cross of Christ as the beginning place of healing.

During this week, I observed tears from young men and old men. I observed remorse and sorrow and had the privilege of listening to suffering and pain. As I debriefed the week, my questions remained about movement. Have these men grown in their understanding of themselves and their victims? Have they encountered themselves? Have they encountered God?

I believe it was John Calvin that said, ‘we never understand ourselves until we have come to a devout musing on the Godhead’. Criminal rehabilitation always requires revealing the triune God so that men and women can be spiritually formed into His likeness and nature.

A Community of ....

by Peter Schultz

Just this last week, the number of men actively engaged in various OF programs was over a hundred. From Taveni to Labasa - from Lautoka to Naboro - from Levuka to Suva - the Operation Foundation team undertake an outstanding task, and in need of some inspiring, I sat in the back of one of our classes on Thursday morning.

Twenty-two men were being led by our team member, Savenaca, through our program called True Identity. There was the usual discussion and application as they moved through the session, but what I was looking for was the emerging pathways of honesty, repentance, and humility.

The conversation flowed between a mix of Fijian (i-Taukei), English and Hindi and as I sat quietly at the back I was mindful of the sheer diversity of the men in front of me. Murder, theft, robbery, rape, all markers of brokenness; all giving witness to a victim or victims; all revealing yet again the truth of the fallen nature of man. Could, and should, hope exist within such a group?

One man stood to share on a discussion point. “I’ve never controlled my anger…” Here was a point of honesty, and so I leaned in to listen. During the break, I pulled him aside to hear his story. “I’ve been in denial of my problems my entire life,” he shared, “and now in prison of all places, I have found my Saviour and I have begun to find peace.”

Our ministry theme for 2021 and 2022 has been ‘To Make Him Known!’ I’m in a quandary, do I change our theme for 2023, or is this our ground zero, the essential of what we really are all about? Making Him Known to a community of outsiders and outcasts.

One of the things shared about Operation Foundation has been that, regardless of which prison the program is being run, the outcome is the same. That is both a testimony to the team and their passion, but also a testimony to the Spirit of God, who desires to make Jesus Christ known among all peoples, and in our community.

Men of Peace

Fifteen men were assigned to our Anger Management program!

Immediately we knew that there are going to be some moments as deep hurts were triggered and old excuses invalidated.

The first session begins by considering the insight given to us in Proverbs 29:11 - “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.” A confronting verse that leads to robust discussion, and where step by step we find men admitting, that at various times, ‘I have all been the fool’. A humbling but truthful first step.

These fifteen men all had a variety of experiences of anger and revealed various perspectives of rights, regrets, and remorse. As the program continued what was redrawn each day on the whiteboard is a line with three points. One the left the Foolish Man, in the middle the Wise Man, and on the right the Man of Peace. Day by day we built the vision, the self-reflection, and the tools to move towards the opportunity and value in the Man of Peace.

We are building the vision of the Man of Peace on Matthew 5:9 - “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God”.

Providing tools that control anger is limited in scope, we must rebirth a new vision of male identity that sits well outside anger and violence as valid forms of expression. Rebuilding a strong vision gives permission for deep healing and the reframing of identity. Twelve words uttered in the Sermon on the Mount provide the call to all men to find a new place of contribution, influence, and blessing.

This week another thirty men will begin their participation in the trial of this new treatment approach. We are combining all of what we know of what works in the treatment of anger management of Pacific men, and establishing that within a wider treatment framework that has a Christ-centred calling and vision.

Already both men and women in Nanuku have been asking for help in this area so our goal is to also take this new material into the community beginning in 2023. We believe it will help address the need for effective community-based treatment for domestic violence.