May 1, 2023 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Joe Garman wanted to minister to people - on his own terms, and certainly not in the prison setting. As he tells it: God had other plans.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to listen to the American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Joe Garman always knew he wanted to go into ministry,
(00:32):
but on his own terms. In his words, God had
other ideas. He first tried his hand at churches, but
they thought he looked too young, so he started a
youth revival ministry and through twists and turns, ended up
in South Korea doing mission work with his wife Linda.
Then he was asked to come speak. There's some incarcerated
(00:54):
Americans there. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, one day I was in the mission house, minding
my own business, i might say, and there was a
knock on the door, and it was a military chaplain
and he had just been to that prison in Teijon,
which was a huge prison. And he told me that
(01:24):
where he was stationed, it was just too far to
have to come to visit that prison on a regular basis.
The roads were not all that good. So he asked me,
he said, this Wednesday, I have scheduled a forty five
minute teaching session with the prisoners, Would you fill in
(01:44):
for me? I said yes, but in my heart I
said no. I did not want to. You know, I
had thirteen churches to oversee, in a Bible college and
all these youth ministries. What was I going to do
going into a prison. I didn't want to get tied
down in a prison work. So I told him yes.
(02:06):
But as soon as I shut the front door, I
leaned against the door and I said to Linda, I
will go one time, and that's it. And Linda has
always been more spiritual than me. And she said, Joe,
why don't you go. You just might like it. And
(02:28):
I said, I will not like it, And I mean
I went. I went with the wrong attitude, with the
wrong heart, and I spent forty five minutes with those guys,
and not forty six. I spent forty five, just like
(02:49):
I promised I would. And I was on my way out,
and the Korean chaplain he caught me just before I
was going to the last door of the prison, and
he said, oh, it was so wonderful to have you here.
Would you please come back and speak to my Korean prisoners. Well,
(03:13):
I've always had a problem in my life, and that
is that I just can't say no to anybody for anything.
I might not do it again, but I can't say
no the first time, you know, I've got to say yes.
So once again, with the wrong attitude, I said yes.
And when I went back to that prison, he met
(03:35):
me at the front door. We went all the way
from one end of the prison to the other. It
was a long prison, and when we got to the end,
there was the gymnasium. And inside this gymnasium were about
(03:56):
I would guestimate there was about four hundred men. I mean,
there was not room for anything but just those men.
They were setting cross legged on the ground on the floor,
and we were so tight in that little gymnasium that
(04:18):
I couldn't even move to the right or to the left.
My interpreter stood beside me, and I preached like a
dying man to dying men, you know. I mean, when
I saw the hunger that was in their eyes and
the opportunity I had here, well, the spirit moved upon me,
(04:44):
I can say that. And I just preached my heart
out to those guys. And when I was finished, you know,
at the Billy Graham crusades, they say, come forward. Well,
there's no way anybody could come forward in that crowded condition.
So I said to my interpreter, I said, mister Kilm,
(05:08):
if they want to make a decision for Christ, if
they want to completely commit themselves to the Lord, have
them to stand up. And the whole room stood like
one body. I mean, not just a few here and
a few, they're the whole room. Just the ground moved.
(05:28):
And I turned to mister Kim and I said, they
must not have understood. Have them all set down again.
That's the kind of faith I had, you know, they
must have misunderstood. So they all sat down again, and
I said, now I'm not going to speak any English.
(05:48):
I want you just in Korean to speak to them
and tell them just exactly what I've said. So he
preached for a few minutes and then he turned to
them and he said, okay, I finished, And I said,
did you tell them everything? I said, yes I did.
(06:09):
And I said, okay, now you tell them only those
who want to make a commitment to Christ and become
Christians and leave all other religions behind, please stand. And
the whole room stood like one body. I mean, that's
(06:30):
the day that I saw where I needed to be
right there. I went home that day and I told Linda,
we're going to go full time into prison ministry.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And you've been listening to. Joe Garman told one heck
of a story about his experience inside a South Korean prison.
He was asked to substitute Bible teach there by a
friend and didn't really want to do it. Why don't
you go, You just might like it, his wife said.
He went though that first time with the wrong heart.
Second time he went still with the wrong heart. But
(07:09):
well as life can do to us, all he saw
something that changed his heart. All those men crammed into
a gymnasium, and as he put it, I preached like
a dying man, the dying men. I preached my heart
out to those guys when we come back. More of
Joe Garman's story here on Our American Stories. Lie Hibib
(07:33):
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
stories from our big cities and small towns. But we
truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are
free to listen to, but they're not free to make
If you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
(07:55):
give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and
give And we continue with our American Stories and Joe
Garman's story. When we last left off, Joe had decided
(08:17):
to go into prison ministry full time, something he initially
didn't want to do, but after an astounding moment witnessing
what he witnessed in the South Korean prison, well, those
prisoners changed his heart, those prisoners changed his life. Let's
return to the story here again, is Joe Garman.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Korea is not hard to get around in. It's only
the same size as our state of Indiana. So you
can get on the train in one corner of Korea
and by the afternoon be in the other corner of Korea,
and then you can come back the same night, you know. So,
I mean we all over South Korea, every little prison,
(09:05):
every little reformatory we went to. Well, after a year
of that, I received a letter from Cecil Todd. Do
you remember Cecil Todd of Revival Arts. See this was
before Chuck Colson came along. He said, we don't have
(09:25):
a prison ministry. Why don't you come here to Americas?
Do hear what you did in Korea? So we came
back here to America. Well, how are you going to
do this? I went to several Red Cross Salvation Armies
and ask them, how do you do your prison ministry nationwide? Well,
(09:48):
the Salvation Army doesn't have a nationwide prison ministry. They
have certain towns and cities where they have a prison ministry,
but as far as an organized prison ministry, they don't
have it, or they didn't in that day. And I
went to this person in that person nobody could help me.
So I just bought a one way plane ticket to Washington, DC.
(10:13):
Can you imagine that? I mean, I did not know
anybody in Washington, but I heard that we had a
chief of chaplains over the federal system in Washington. He
was located in the Pentagon. I mean, this little Missouri boy,
(10:37):
I'd never even been to the Pentagon before, you know,
went in there and found his office number, and everything
went up in the elevator to his floor. And when
I walked through the front door, there was a lady
sitting behind a big round desk, and I introduced her
(10:59):
as who I was and what i'd come to do
and she said, do you have an appointment? And I
said no, and she said, okay, give me a minute.
Within five minutes, I was setting down at the desk
with him. And I learned that day that that's exactly
(11:21):
where I should have gone. Because you see, there is
what is called the trickle down theory in the prison ministry.
New rehabilitation programs start on the federal level because they
have more money to work. If they're successful, they trickle
down into the state, and then into the county and
then into the city jails. That's how it works. So
(11:45):
if I would have gone to a state prison, I
would probably have just been in a state prison. But
because I started on the federal level and all of
this was by God's design, I still get shivers just
thinking about it. Because I started on the federal level.
What happened is he said, I'm going to give you
(12:06):
a letter that you can use to get into any
federal prison in America. And he said, I'm going to
send a letter to all of my chaplains asking them
to cooperate. I mean, this is the first time I
ever met the man. You know. It was just like
God was pulling all the strings because he was. And
(12:27):
so that's my story. And I started on the federal
level and started trickling down into the state and into
the county. And today we're in all fifty states, plus
all five of the territories, and we are in many
nations overseas. We by faith believe that we have been
(12:55):
able to help people get over whatever the problem was
that took them to prison in the first place. We
know that for a fact. We've had him tell us
and write us and all this stuff. So perhaps the
greatest story that happened to us was the baptism of
(13:16):
Emagnuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama. I was privileged to
be a part of his conversion story. And we also
build babtistries here for our prisons. We have a baptistry
shop out back. So we provided a baptistry for him
(13:36):
and he was baptized into Christ. And when he got
out of prison, of course, he was extradited back to
Panama and he lived with his daughter until he died.
And the people in Panama have told us that he
was faithful to Christ all the way. Of course, his
(13:58):
daughter was nothing to be a shit aimed of. She
was an awesome Christian. She made sure that he kept
his walk with the Lord God. She actually served as
my interpreter when I would witness to Can you imagine
sitting there talking to your daughter, and your daughter talking
(14:18):
to you about sin here need to be freed from
your sin. I mean this is coming from your daughter,
So yes, that that is probably the greatest. Of course.
Oh they're all great, you know, from the least to
(14:40):
the most. In Korea, several of the prisoners I went to,
the correctional officers would say, did you bring us any
Bibles today? And I say yes, I did. Oh, we'll
help you bring them in. So they go out to
the jeep and we'd unload them and then bring them in.
But we learned later in some of these prisons that
(15:06):
they were using them for toilet tissue. They didn't have
toilet tissue for the prisoners. I was so angry, so angry,
because that was our money, you know, we had been
buying those out of our money. I went straight to
the prison. The warden was a friend of mine, and
I said, is this true? And he said, yes, it's true.
(15:29):
And I vowed I would not put another Bible in
a prison for this reason. See, I just out of anger.
I just did that. And then it came about that
I got a letter from Chinese man in there who
had been going to the restroom and started reading the
(15:51):
toilet tissue and he read he read the first chapter
of First John and it convinced it was all about
the Lord being love, you know. And he had never
heard anything like this before, that the Lord was love.
He had always heard that the Lord was angry and
(16:12):
punished people. And he said, brother Joe, would you please
this is all this is all the paper I have.
Would you please bring me a Bible? And I thought, well,
I'll do it. So I took him a Bible. And
that man when he was released. Can you believe this,
(16:34):
He had been a prisoner and they made him the
night security guard on a Bible college campus. That was
his story. He gave his whole life to the Lord
and he was just one of the best nighttime watchmen
that they had ever had. That's why it's important, because
(17:01):
they need to realize that in God's eyes there's somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And A terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Monte Montgomery and a special thanks to
Joe Garman for sharing his story. He's the founder of
American Rehabilitation Ministries otherwise known as ARM or ARM and
you can find out more about them ATMN dot org,
(17:25):
armman dot org. They domestically ministered a one point eight
million people who were incarcerated in America's over fifteen hundred
state and federal prisons. And that story of that Chinese man,
an American bringing the Bible to a Chinese man who
was using it as toilet paper. Read that one piece
(17:46):
of paper from there came to God. The story of
Joe Garman, the story of how God moved him to
serve the least of these. Here on our American stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to listen to the American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Joe Garman always knew he wanted to go into ministry,
(00:32):
but on his own terms. In his words, God had
other ideas. He first tried his hand at churches, but
they thought he looked too young, so he started a
youth revival ministry and through twists and turns, ended up
in South Korea doing mission work with his wife Linda.
Then he was asked to come speak. There's some incarcerated
(00:54):
Americans there. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, one day I was in the mission house, minding
my own business, i might say, and there was a
knock on the door, and it was a military chaplain
and he had just been to that prison in Teijon,
which was a huge prison. And he told me that
(01:24):
where he was stationed, it was just too far to
have to come to visit that prison on a regular basis.
The roads were not all that good. So he asked me,
he said, this Wednesday, I have scheduled a forty five
minute teaching session with the prisoners, Would you fill in
(01:44):
for me? I said yes, but in my heart I
said no. I did not want to. You know, I
had thirteen churches to oversee, in a Bible college and
all these youth ministries. What was I going to do
going into a prison. I didn't want to get tied
down in a prison work. So I told him yes.
(02:06):
But as soon as I shut the front door, I
leaned against the door and I said to Linda, I
will go one time, and that's it. And Linda has
always been more spiritual than me. And she said, Joe,
why don't you go. You just might like it. And
(02:28):
I said, I will not like it, And I mean
I went. I went with the wrong attitude, with the
wrong heart, and I spent forty five minutes with those guys,
and not forty six. I spent forty five, just like
(02:49):
I promised I would. And I was on my way out,
and the Korean chaplain he caught me just before I
was going to the last door of the prison, and
he said, oh, it was so wonderful to have you here.
Would you please come back and speak to my Korean prisoners. Well,
(03:13):
I've always had a problem in my life, and that
is that I just can't say no to anybody for anything.
I might not do it again, but I can't say
no the first time, you know, I've got to say yes.
So once again, with the wrong attitude, I said yes.
And when I went back to that prison, he met
(03:35):
me at the front door. We went all the way
from one end of the prison to the other. It
was a long prison, and when we got to the end,
there was the gymnasium. And inside this gymnasium were about
(03:56):
I would guestimate there was about four hundred men. I mean,
there was not room for anything but just those men.
They were setting cross legged on the ground on the floor,
and we were so tight in that little gymnasium that
(04:18):
I couldn't even move to the right or to the left.
My interpreter stood beside me, and I preached like a
dying man to dying men, you know. I mean, when
I saw the hunger that was in their eyes and
the opportunity I had here, well, the spirit moved upon me,
(04:44):
I can say that. And I just preached my heart
out to those guys. And when I was finished, you know,
at the Billy Graham crusades, they say, come forward. Well,
there's no way anybody could come forward in that crowded condition.
So I said to my interpreter, I said, mister Kilm,
(05:08):
if they want to make a decision for Christ, if
they want to completely commit themselves to the Lord, have
them to stand up. And the whole room stood like
one body. I mean, not just a few here and
a few, they're the whole room. Just the ground moved.
(05:28):
And I turned to mister Kim and I said, they
must not have understood. Have them all set down again.
That's the kind of faith I had, you know, they
must have misunderstood. So they all sat down again, and
I said, now I'm not going to speak any English.
(05:48):
I want you just in Korean to speak to them
and tell them just exactly what I've said. So he
preached for a few minutes and then he turned to
them and he said, okay, I finished, And I said,
did you tell them everything? I said, yes I did.
(06:09):
And I said, okay, now you tell them only those
who want to make a commitment to Christ and become
Christians and leave all other religions behind, please stand. And
the whole room stood like one body. I mean, that's
(06:30):
the day that I saw where I needed to be
right there. I went home that day and I told Linda,
we're going to go full time into prison ministry.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And you've been listening to. Joe Garman told one heck
of a story about his experience inside a South Korean prison.
He was asked to substitute Bible teach there by a
friend and didn't really want to do it. Why don't
you go, You just might like it, his wife said.
He went though that first time with the wrong heart.
Second time he went still with the wrong heart. But
(07:09):
well as life can do to us, all he saw
something that changed his heart. All those men crammed into
a gymnasium, and as he put it, I preached like
a dying man, the dying men. I preached my heart
out to those guys when we come back. More of
Joe Garman's story here on Our American Stories. Lie Hibib
(07:33):
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
stories from our big cities and small towns. But we
truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are
free to listen to, but they're not free to make
If you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
(07:55):
give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and
give And we continue with our American Stories and Joe
Garman's story. When we last left off, Joe had decided
(08:17):
to go into prison ministry full time, something he initially
didn't want to do, but after an astounding moment witnessing
what he witnessed in the South Korean prison, well, those
prisoners changed his heart, those prisoners changed his life. Let's
return to the story here again, is Joe Garman.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Korea is not hard to get around in. It's only
the same size as our state of Indiana. So you
can get on the train in one corner of Korea
and by the afternoon be in the other corner of Korea,
and then you can come back the same night, you know. So,
I mean we all over South Korea, every little prison,
(09:05):
every little reformatory we went to. Well, after a year
of that, I received a letter from Cecil Todd. Do
you remember Cecil Todd of Revival Arts. See this was
before Chuck Colson came along. He said, we don't have
(09:25):
a prison ministry. Why don't you come here to Americas?
Do hear what you did in Korea? So we came
back here to America. Well, how are you going to
do this? I went to several Red Cross Salvation Armies
and ask them, how do you do your prison ministry nationwide? Well,
(09:48):
the Salvation Army doesn't have a nationwide prison ministry. They
have certain towns and cities where they have a prison ministry,
but as far as an organized prison ministry, they don't
have it, or they didn't in that day. And I
went to this person in that person nobody could help me.
So I just bought a one way plane ticket to Washington, DC.
(10:13):
Can you imagine that? I mean, I did not know
anybody in Washington, but I heard that we had a
chief of chaplains over the federal system in Washington. He
was located in the Pentagon. I mean, this little Missouri boy,
(10:37):
I'd never even been to the Pentagon before, you know,
went in there and found his office number, and everything
went up in the elevator to his floor. And when
I walked through the front door, there was a lady
sitting behind a big round desk, and I introduced her
(10:59):
as who I was and what i'd come to do
and she said, do you have an appointment? And I
said no, and she said, okay, give me a minute.
Within five minutes, I was setting down at the desk
with him. And I learned that day that that's exactly
(11:21):
where I should have gone. Because you see, there is
what is called the trickle down theory in the prison ministry.
New rehabilitation programs start on the federal level because they
have more money to work. If they're successful, they trickle
down into the state, and then into the county and
then into the city jails. That's how it works. So
(11:45):
if I would have gone to a state prison, I
would probably have just been in a state prison. But
because I started on the federal level and all of
this was by God's design, I still get shivers just
thinking about it. Because I started on the federal level.
What happened is he said, I'm going to give you
(12:06):
a letter that you can use to get into any
federal prison in America. And he said, I'm going to
send a letter to all of my chaplains asking them
to cooperate. I mean, this is the first time I
ever met the man. You know. It was just like
God was pulling all the strings because he was. And
(12:27):
so that's my story. And I started on the federal
level and started trickling down into the state and into
the county. And today we're in all fifty states, plus
all five of the territories, and we are in many
nations overseas. We by faith believe that we have been
(12:55):
able to help people get over whatever the problem was
that took them to prison in the first place. We
know that for a fact. We've had him tell us
and write us and all this stuff. So perhaps the
greatest story that happened to us was the baptism of
(13:16):
Emagnuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama. I was privileged to
be a part of his conversion story. And we also
build babtistries here for our prisons. We have a baptistry
shop out back. So we provided a baptistry for him
(13:36):
and he was baptized into Christ. And when he got
out of prison, of course, he was extradited back to
Panama and he lived with his daughter until he died.
And the people in Panama have told us that he
was faithful to Christ all the way. Of course, his
(13:58):
daughter was nothing to be a shit aimed of. She
was an awesome Christian. She made sure that he kept
his walk with the Lord God. She actually served as
my interpreter when I would witness to Can you imagine
sitting there talking to your daughter, and your daughter talking
(14:18):
to you about sin here need to be freed from
your sin. I mean this is coming from your daughter,
So yes, that that is probably the greatest. Of course.
Oh they're all great, you know, from the least to
(14:40):
the most. In Korea, several of the prisoners I went to,
the correctional officers would say, did you bring us any
Bibles today? And I say yes, I did. Oh, we'll
help you bring them in. So they go out to
the jeep and we'd unload them and then bring them in.
But we learned later in some of these prisons that
(15:06):
they were using them for toilet tissue. They didn't have
toilet tissue for the prisoners. I was so angry, so angry,
because that was our money, you know, we had been
buying those out of our money. I went straight to
the prison. The warden was a friend of mine, and
I said, is this true? And he said, yes, it's true.
(15:29):
And I vowed I would not put another Bible in
a prison for this reason. See, I just out of anger.
I just did that. And then it came about that
I got a letter from Chinese man in there who
had been going to the restroom and started reading the
(15:51):
toilet tissue and he read he read the first chapter
of First John and it convinced it was all about
the Lord being love, you know. And he had never
heard anything like this before, that the Lord was love.
He had always heard that the Lord was angry and
(16:12):
punished people. And he said, brother Joe, would you please
this is all this is all the paper I have.
Would you please bring me a Bible? And I thought, well,
I'll do it. So I took him a Bible. And
that man when he was released. Can you believe this,
(16:34):
He had been a prisoner and they made him the
night security guard on a Bible college campus. That was
his story. He gave his whole life to the Lord
and he was just one of the best nighttime watchmen
that they had ever had. That's why it's important, because
(17:01):
they need to realize that in God's eyes there's somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And A terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Monte Montgomery and a special thanks to
Joe Garman for sharing his story. He's the founder of
American Rehabilitation Ministries otherwise known as ARM or ARM and
you can find out more about them ATMN dot org,
(17:25):
armman dot org. They domestically ministered a one point eight
million people who were incarcerated in America's over fifteen hundred
state and federal prisons. And that story of that Chinese man,
an American bringing the Bible to a Chinese man who
was using it as toilet paper. Read that one piece
(17:46):
of paper from there came to God. The story of
Joe Garman, the story of how God moved him to
serve the least of these. Here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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