Prison work in South Africa began in 1994 using an early version of World Bible School lessons that had been translated into Afrikaans. In December of 1996, Chris Burke with WBS traveled with me to prisons in KwaZulu/Natal to visit other WBS teachers and some of their students that had been incarcerated. At the Cnome prison, Chris Naude had five students, there were several in Durban and Clay Hart ( WBS ) had quite a number of students in the Westville prison. Clay joined with me for the first NLB workshop that was held in that area and we involved most of the WBS students in our study groups along with several spiritual workers of the area. Brother Dennis Marren and his wife, members of the local congregation, also got involved. In East London, Chester Woodhall, who has been using the WBS lesson for many years, starting in Congo and Zambia , has a team that works in at least four prisons. We have managed to involve those students in our study groups as well. Many of the students went on to become baptized believers.

Early this year, Quinton Funk gave me a list of more than 2,000 names of WBS students in prisons throughout the country. I am working to connect these students with teachers in their area to get them involved in study groups and Sunday worship. There have been baptism requests and I am working to get permission for those baptisms in areas where we have teachers. In remote areas we encourage students to complete a form to hopefully help them and us work through the process of getting permission from the head of the prison and the church there to get them baptized whenever we can get the opportunity. We encourage them to continue with their studies during this process. If they have completed the WBS lessons, we tell them to request from their USA teacher to enroll them with NLB.

I visit personally with students in my area to update the information we have on them and work to train teachers associated with WBS , helping them to get permission to teach in the prisons. There are presently 180,000 inmates in 228 prisons in South Africa .