LBJ New Year Newsletter, Jan 3, 2018

Following is the New Years Newsletter that was sent on Jan 3, and that I am republishing as a post at this website:

Happy New Year LBJ Diocesan Volunteers!

I thought this would be a good time to send out a ‘Newsletter’. There is really nothing new, but just some info you may be interested in, and a refresher on our information sharing efforts.

Volunteer reporting of visit information:

Thanks very much for sending me an update after each of your visits, letting me know which pod(s) you visited, and how many men/boys attended. It is also helpful if you let me know when you can not visit, so that I know not to send you a reminder email. This information helps the Diocese keep track of our visits at LBJ so we can know if we need more volunteers or more time slots. It also helps some of you who would like to know which pods were visited by other volunteers on your floor, so that we can better cover all the pods.

Volunteer Opportunities:

I thought I’d let you know where we need more volunteer help at LBJ. We’re not asking you to do more – you are doing enough! You are all providing a great service and giving your time, and we appreciate it. However, if you know somebody who has shown an interest in jail ministry, or if you are looking for additional volunteer opportunities, this info may be of interest to you. Here are the times where we need help:

Visit Forms:

I think you are all filling out visit forms in the jail after your visit. If you aren’t doing it, or don’t know what these are, please let me know. The Chaplain has told us that these are important, and they use them to verify that the Diocese is using the assigned slots. If the forms aren’t filled out, then it looks to the Chaplain like we aren’t using the time, and we could lose the time slot.

Summary Table:

I thought I’d take this opportunity to give a brief description of the Summary Table that is at the link I gave above. If you aren’t interested in the table, you can ignore this. To describe it, I’ll give a snapshot of the current table, and describe each column with examples from the table.

Here is a snapshot of the table:

Summary Period: this is the number of days the table covers. Example: the Summary Period for the table above is 60 days
Date: This is the last time that the summary table was updated
For every Pod on each level, it provides the following information:

1. Days since visit: This is the number of days since the last visit. Example: Pod 11B was last visited 48 days ago.
2. num of visits: This is the number of visits in the Summary Period. Example: Pod 11A has been visited 4 times in the last 60 days.
3. Men at visit, ave: This is the average number of men at each visit over the summary period. For example, Pod 11A has averaged 6.5  men per visit over the last 60 days.
4. Men at visit, last: This is the number of men at the last visit. This just gives an idea of how many men from the pod have attended recently. If a pod is called and nobody turns out, the there will be 0 at the last visit. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t visit that pod, since we could get a good turnout the next time. Example: Pod 31B had 12 men at the last visit, and averages 8.4 men per visit.
5. NA: any entry that says NA (Not Applicable) means that there was no visit in the last summary period. Example: Pod 33A hasn’t been visited in the last 60 days.

That’s it for now. Thanks very much for your service to the men and boys at LBJ. Peace and blessings to you in the new year!