Advertisement But Sobotta isn’t an inmate.
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And although an assistant pastor at Rivers Harvest Church, where Sobotta is a member, once joked Sobotta has his own congregation in the jail, he is not a clergyman.
The 79-year-old Holmen resident has just found that his faith journey has led him to visit men in jail every week.
“Everybody is looking for spiritual growth and that’s what it does for me,” Sobotta said about his visits, and then added, “That doesn’t sound right. I don’t want to put on like I’m real spiritual, but I learn a lot from it.”
Sobotta attends two Bible studies every week at the jail and also speaks one-on-one with inmates over a phone, separated by a window, twice a week.
His visits, he said, are partly inspired by the Bible verse in Matthew 25, in which Jesus tells the disciples that when they have visited those in prison, they have visited the Son of Man.
Before Sobotta began making regular visits to jail, he and his wife’s Gospel band played at jails and prisons around the state. Then in 1982, he went to see a young inmate who had attacked his family members.
Two and a half decades later, he is still visiting inmates.
Tom Skemp, chaplain at the La Crosse County Jail, said Sobotta is the only person to make weekly pastoral visits in the jail.
“The guys like him and they respect him,” said Skemp, who organizes pastoral visits. “This bunch isn’t easy to get consistent respect out of, and he manages to do it because he’s a good man and he’s honest and up front.”
Sobotta’s church helps him out with gas money, and when he goes on his visits, his wife and others pray for him.
He talks to the inmates about walking in forgiveness with all people.
“It’s hard for these guys when they’re in there,” he said. “It’s the worst place they’ve ever been. I kid. I say, ‘What is it about this place that makes you want to come back here?’ They say, ‘We don’t want to.’ I say, ‘Think a little deeper.’”
And he is sometimes able to keep in touch with the men after they get out, like one who was afraid to look for a job because he’d have to walk by a tavern.
The two prayed together, Sobotta said, and the next day the man went to find a job.
I imagine that conversation, like any conversation I’ve had with Sobotta, must have ended with him telling the man: “Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I.” And I imagine that man must have felt a warmth in him, growing as much from Sobotta’s kind voice as his words.
“I just turned 79 in August, and God is not finished with me yet,” Sobotta said last week during our interview as he tapped his shoes together. “I have joy. I feel joy every time I go down to the jail.”
Joe Orso works part time for the La Crosse Tribune and the Franciscan Spirituality Center. Opinions in this column are his own.
