One80: Testimonies of Transformation
Be inspired by stories of Christian transformation from around the world--and next door! Hear miraculous coming-to-Jesus stories from all walks of life and be amazed at how God writes a story in all of us. One80 is a production of OneWay Ministries.
One80: Testimonies of Transformation
92: Prison Saved His Life, Louis Dooley
Hear the heartwarming transformation of a killer turned Jesus freak. Hear how Louis Dooley entered prison at 19 with two life sentences and already planned to kill a third for sending him a care package.
”I kind of looked around and I was like, ‘Who is this, the welcoming committee or something?’
"And so I look in the box and there were a bunch of snacks, some socks, underwear, t-shirts, all things I didn't have. And so my first thought was ‘I got to kill this guy because where I'm from, you don't give somebody something for nothing!’"
Hear how a piece of paper that night gave him a new life sentence of freedom in Christ.
Louis was served two life sentences plus 100 years in prison, and amazingly, this is where his life begins. He made God a promise from prison and Louis never looked back. He received parole, got married, and is the leader of Philemon House ministry. He is the author of Prison Saved My Life.
Louis’ book, Prison Saved My Life
One80 Episode 55, The Prison Story of Michael Buhrman
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I kind of looked around and I was like you know who is this? The welcoming committee or something? And so I look in the box and there were a bunch of snacks, some socks, underwear, t-shirts, all things I didn't have. My first thought was I got to kill this guy because, where I'm from, you don't give somebody something for nothing, and so I figured I would eat some of the snacks, make him think I took the bait.
Speaker 2:wait till later that night. Figure out what it's going to look like as I go, try to take this man's life. Louis Dooley had three death sentences and the guy in jail who just gave him a welcome box Well, louis was planning number four Amazing show today. This is Margaret Araneta. Welcome to Lewis's 180.
Speaker 1:Man life had its challenges for me growing up in East St Louis, illinois, and being a biracial kid in an all-Black area made it all the worse with all the drama and things that were taking place around me. With all the drama and things that were taking place around me with gangs and drugs and things like that, and I didn't really have an escape because being outside I was picked on a lot by my peers because I looked different, and so I couldn't really find refuge in the home because, although my mother was loving and sweet and kind, as a mom would be, my father was quite the opposite, very mean person, very abusive, not as much verbally as physically abusive to myself and also to my mother and so I saw a lot of violence outside the house. I experienced violence outside the house because I got in fights and beat up all the time, and then I experienced violence in the home, and so it was really a challenge growing up trying to figure out like why am I where I am? Why do I look the way I look? Why was I born to the parents I was born to? Just a lot of questions. I had A lot of hurt and pain turned into some anger at an early age for me, and as life went on, I kind of poured myself into school and that was a place that didn't judge me. It was a place where I found that I was pretty smart. I made really good grades in elementary school. I also went to some spelling bees when I was in elementary school and it was there I discovered I wanted to be an attorney because my great-grandmother used to watch a lot of Perry Mason back in the day.
Speaker 1:As I was progressing in school, a time of change came about because my mother wanted to move me to a different area that had better schools and that was safer, around my seventh grade, eighth grade year, and so I found myself with a new school around pretty much all white students now. Never had a white teacher before, never had a male teacher before. People treated me different, a lot less violence, but still being treated differently nonetheless, and so it kind of like started all over again, but still being treated differently nonetheless. And so it kind of like started all over again, minus the violence at school. And the school district I was in was a lot higher and better than what I came from and so where I was like a pretty much straight A student. Before I got my first E, I got my first F and I was failing pretty much all my classes because they were years ahead in curriculum than what I was used to.
Speaker 2:Lewis was trained in the school of hard knocks. It was so difficult. It's hard to imagine the believer we now know. But God works in the difficult of our lives. Listen in.
Speaker 1:So I was trying to figure that stuff out.
Speaker 1:My mother was working two and sometimes three jobs. My father would be running the streets doing whatever it was he was doing dealing drugs, womanizing, things like that and so I was just trying to figure out being a teenager, you know, trying to make the basketball team, playing on the football team, trying to make the baseball team because I really love sports and didn't make any team except the football team. And then, just out of nowhere, one day when I came home from school, my mother told me my father had been murdered and I just rocked my world and for as much as I was scared to death of this guy man, I love this guy more than anything on the earth, you know and so that really hurt. And then that hurt again turned into anger. I just kind of felt like you know, what am I going to do with this? Things aren't going right at school, Things aren't right at home. My mother was trying to figure it out on her own and here comes little Louis, you know, no counseling, really no, anything, just me trying to figure things out.
Speaker 2:So sad, but now, as we'll see, we're entering into the tug of Lewis's dark side and the drag that brought him to his rock bottom.
Speaker 1:At school, a different crowd was always present, the kids who were up to no good, and I had managed to stay away from that crowd because I was just scared if I got in it then my father would kill me, because he knew that life, because he was in that life, and although I was very curious about that life, I stayed away from it. Well, now that threat was gone, the interest that I had continued to grow, and those kids really didn't have much judgment for me. They were the burnouts, the stoners, the undesirables that you find in every kind of school, the outcasts, if you will. And so I wasn't an outcast type person, but started hanging out with those people and I was presented with choices with drugs and alcohol, and I just jumped into that stuff. I found out that I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed nice things that I could never have, like Air Jordan, tennis shoes and trendy name brand clothing, and so the method I found in order to acquire these things were selling drugs. And so I started selling weed while I was in high school and by the time I managed to graduate high school, which was definitely like a lot of help and a lot of cheating. I graduated from selling marijuana to selling crack.
Speaker 1:And that's when things took a huge turn, because the individuals that smoked marijuana were much different than the individuals that smoked crack, and the people where I got my drugs from were even more different. And so I started being around guys that I didn't know, known killers, known thieves, and I'm just like, hey, I'm just trying to get some products so I can make some money. And so with being around that crowd, a lot of violence came my way. I found myself on the other end of a gun, several times being robbed, and I thought, man, I don't like this, and so I decided not to quit but to push the gas pedal and accelerate things by me acquiring guns so I could protect myself. And I bought some guns off the street, which I was kind of leery of, and then I thought you know what, let me just go rob some gun shops for guns. And so I did that a few times, and now I'm armed, I'm selling drugs, I'm in the street.
Speaker 1:It's a recipe for disaster, and that's what it turned into a disaster where things culminated when I was 19 years old, I was convicted of attempted murder and first degree armed robbery and sentenced to life plus 100 years in prison and I was shocked, to say the least. I felt like my life was over and, as they, you know, I was in the courtroom and they took my clothes, they took my dignity, even felt like they took my manhood, and they put me in a cell. And I had got arrested multiple times in the past and, you know, stayed there a few days or a week and got back out, so no big deal. But this time was different because I got life in 100 years and I'm trying to wrap my mind around it. Like what does that mean? Do I do life die? Come back and do 100 years? Like what do I do with this? I've never heard anything like that.
Speaker 2:It's hard to see how quickly Lewis's life spirals, and now he finds himself in jail, about to go to prison, on actually three life sentences.
Speaker 1:And so I get into the dorm area which was pretty much the norm, I was used to that I found an empty bunk because there were no open cells pretty used to that and I sit down and before I could really get my bearings, another guy approached me with the orange jumpsuit on, like mine, with a cardboard box with a lid on it. He just set it on the floor, walked away. I kind of looked around and I was like you know who is this? The welcoming committee or something. And so I look in the box and there were a bunch of snacks, some socks, underwear, t-shirts, all things I didn't have. My first thought was I got to kill this guy, because where I'm from, you don't give somebody something for nothing. And so I figured I would eat some of the snacks, make him think I took the bait, wait till later that night, figure out what it's going to look like as I go, try to take this man's life. And so later that night came he was in a cell. I approached his cell as quietly as I could, I rushed inside and when I got in there I found him and two other men with these books open. They were Bibles. I didn't know it at the time and I kind of stopped in my tracks. I was like whoa, like what's going on here? I only thought it was one person in there and it's a one man sale. So obviously I wasn't too good at, you know, plotting and planning. And so the guy continued to read and at some point he stopped and he looked at me and he said you believe in God? I said no, man, I don't believe in God, I believe in evolution. And that was just something I picked up in high school. I wasn't raised in the church, None of that kind of stuff. I say I was raised heathen. And so he handed me a little pamphlet which was a Bible track. Again, I didn't know that at the time and I took it. And now I looked up at me as if to say, OK, you can leave now. So I did just that Walked back to my bunk, I sat down.
Speaker 1:All the adrenaline that I had going from that I was going to go, try to put my hands on a man and take his life, something I hadn't done before. All that adrenaline started wearing off. I was getting high before trial every day, smoking cocaine and smoking weed, so that the high was wearing off and reality was really setting in and I had determined that I no longer wanted to live, that if I could just be dead, that would be better than spending the rest of my life in prison. I don't like pain, especially self-inflicted pain, so I didn't try to kill myself, but I definitely was wanting to be dead. So I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 1:So I opened up this pamphlet and started talking about God. It talked about creation, you know, Genesis 1, Genesis 2. It talked about his greatest creation, which was man, Adam and then Eve. And then it talked about sin that everybody has sin in Romans and I was like sin, Like what is that? And it described sin. It talked about that it was disobeying God, you know. And it listed some sins and I found myself in many of those sins it listed. And then it said that everybody who sins and dies will be separated from God eternally. And I was like, wow, well, if I'm a sinner, if everybody's a sinner, then everybody's going to be eternally separated from God in a place called hell, which I heard of heaven and hell, and I heard one was good, one was bad, and if I had to choose, I would choose the good one.
Speaker 1:But that was the extent of my thinking. And so I just was sitting here taking all this in. It was like a fire hose, if you will, of information. Even though it was just a Bible track, it was a lot to comprehend. English was my best subject in school. I read a lot at some point in my life, so my comprehension level was pretty high. So I was really understanding this and I truly believe, as I look back, that the Holy Spirit was really working on my mind, working on my heart, to help me understand things.
Speaker 1:And then, lastly, it starts talking about this man named Jesus. That a man named Jesus came to this earth, born from God, and he was a perfect man, unlike every other human. Thus he was without sin. And then he came with one major purpose, and that was to die to pay every man and woman's debt of sin that they had. And I understood that and I was like, well, if I have a debt that needs to be paid, then I never want to pay a debt, by the way. And so it's like, if somebody wants to pay it for me, hey, come on with that. And so it talked about Jesus coming and dying for my sins, shedding his blood, him taking my place, and I was like, wow, like if this is real, then this matters.
Speaker 1:It talked about me putting my faith and trust in Jesus, believing in his miraculous birth, his sinless life, his atoning death and then, lastly, his resurrection and then his ascension. And it said if you put your faith and trust in Jesus, confess your mouth to Lord Jesus and believe that God raised him from the dead Romans 10, 9, and 10, that you will be saved. And I was like man, I want to be saved. If they said, raise your hand, I'd have raised my hand, I'd have did jumping jacks. I wanted to be saved. And raise your hand, I'd have raised my hand, I'd have did jumping jacks like I wanted to be saved. And it was mostly I didn't want to be living in the circumstances I was living in. So I had a spark of faith if you will. And then I prayed my first prayer. I said, God, if you really real, for real, I'm going to serve you for the rest of my life, but the minute you show me, you ain't real. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:In that first prayer ever, Lewis is transformed and you'll notice the next day. He has discernment. That's new.
Speaker 1:That night I went to sleep. I woke up the next day. One of the first things that happened was other people who were incarcerated, who had different faith beliefs, would approach me. You know they were evangelizing for everything. I had Jehovah's Witness. I didn't know about any of this stuff. How true it was, how not true.
Speaker 1:I was just seeking God and I remember a guy who was a part of a Muslim. I call it a denomination because you have the Muslims that most of us know, but then you have the Moorish Science Temple of America, then you have the Nation of Islam, which was made famous and maybe even started by Louis Farrakhan. So you have different types of Muslims, if you will, or different sex, and so this one guy was in one of those and I remember him approaching me and he was saying you need to proclaim your nationality because obviously I'm not white, my mother's Italian, my father's black, so I'm half white, half black, but I don't look white. Everybody thinks I'm Puerto Rican. And so he says you need to proclaim your nationality. You know, like, stand up as being a minority. And like, stand up about that. And I was like, wow, really. And he was also saying, like these blonde haired, blue eyed devils, and that's why I raised an eyebrow. I was like, oh, and I said I said well, if I join this, my mother is white. Could she be a part of this too? And he was like, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:And so quickly, as I was trying to vet, if you will, these different God groups to see which ones were right or if they were all right, it was very easy. I feel like the Lord was helping me and the Holy Spirit was moving. It was very easy for me to determine if there is a God and there is, and he created everything and he did, and all the people in the various colors and the various areas all around the planet he created. And if he was a God of love which he definitely is John 3, 16, how would he love one segment of individuals and not another, especially based on the color of their skin? And so I was just quickly like you know what God can't be in, that he cannot be in that, because that can't be God. And that was just something I believe the Holy Spirit revealed to me. And so I was easily able to discard them as a credible group to be learning from, about God, and I count that as a gift, because they're as corrupt as corrupt can be. I learned.
Speaker 1:Years later those guys came to me. They brought me my first Bible. They taught me how to pray. We would read the word together, we would sing songs together, and this was day two of me being in the county jail, while all these men around me were waiting to go to trial, mostly for murder. And so about 30 days passed. I ended up getting to prison and along the way, god was just revealing himself to me in many different ways to kind of show me. In that prayer I believe that you know, if you're not real, I'm not going to serve you that he was showing me, that it was no doubt that he was real and that Christianity was the correct path to get to God. And so I continued serving the Lord where I was at. I got a job in the chapel.
Speaker 1:Within the first week of being in prison, I met a ministry called Set Free Ministries where there was a young man coming in passing out Bible courses from Emmaus Worldwide so we could learn the Bible. And I'm like well, you know, the Bible was a daunting book, to say, or let me rephrase it the Bible is a daunting book. It's man. It's the greatest book ever written by God Only book written by God, I believe. But, man, there's a lot in it and it's not so easy to understand then and even now. And it's like, well, if I'm going to serve God and if he wrote this book, then I need to get to know who he is, and if he wrote this book, then I need to get to know who he is, and if he has something for me like expectations or blessings, maybe both I want to find out what that is and I couldn't really do it on my own. I had read through the entire Bible in about 20 something days.
Speaker 2:Did you get that? Lewis read the whole Bible in 20 days.
Speaker 1:And I probably got a very small fraction of a percent of what the whole book said. But I read through it because I had tons of downtime, of course. The first after Genesis and Exodus it got kind of rocky. Going through the prophets was kind of weird. Getting to the Gospels made more sense, and then the epistles, which the main one was my favorite book and still is is James so clear, spoke to me then speaks to me today. So it was helping me understand God a little bit but what he expected of me a lot as I entered into the epistles in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:And so I started taking these Bible courses. I was going to every church service and Bible study that they offered. I started learning about different denominations. I learned some of the services I was going to probably weren't Christian and so I stopped going as I was learning the word of God and kind of testing what the people that from the outside came to teach and weighing it against the Bible. You know, studying to show myself approved, you know. So that I'm not ashamed, I was just doing that. I had my job in the chapel, I was going to church, I was serving the Lord and I just decided that I'm going to be here for the rest of my life and I'm going to serve the Lord, no matter where I'm at, whether I'm going to be in prison or out of prison, I'm going to serve the Lord.
Speaker 1:I ended up getting two more life sentences because one of those gunshot robberies caught up with me. So at one point I had three lives and a hundred years and I took the two lives as a plea bargain, which a plea bargain is when you admit your guilt and you take the sentence that they offer you. That was the maximum sentence I could have gotten if I would have went to trial and got found guilty, but I felt God just saying hey, you know you're guilty, quit running, don't take your poor mother down to there again with another trial, and, hey, take your lumps. So I humbled myself and I took my lumps and I remember reading a verse that talked about that peace that surpasses all understanding. I pray and ask God to give me that peace, because I knew I would need that more than ever, because that was pretty much in my mind sealing my fate, because I was appealing the first crime I went to prison for and if I won my appeal, there's a chance I could have got a lesser sentence or I could have got it overturned and gotten out. But since I took that plea, I would have to plead insanity or I was beaten into a confession, which neither are that easy to prove.
Speaker 1:So I just figured I was just signing my own self up to be in prison for the rest of my life. God gave me peace. I got an opportunity to see God not only work in my life but the lives of countless others. During my incarceration there was a closeness with God that I felt that I haven't felt since I've been out, and it was a blessing. Every day in prison was a struggle in more ways than one, but every day was a blessing as well, because you learn to cling close to Christ when you're up against it. And being a Christian in prison, you're almost always up against it because of your fellow prisoners who like to try to take advantage of people who wear the name of Christ.
Speaker 2:We asked Lewis about Christian persecution in prison. We asked Lewis about Christian persecution in prison, which is very real, and he says you're going to have to go to his book called Prison Saved my Life. The link is in the show notes.
Speaker 1:It's amazing and so I was just doing my time, playing sports, going to Bible study, had opportunities to start leading Bible studies, had the first prisoner led Bible study that that prison ever allowed. So that was an honor and a privilege and it was cool because we would go evangelize on the yard and then we'd invite these guys to the Bible study that my mentor would teach and he was like way in the clouds and these young guys was like I mean, I was young myself, like my mid twenties. These guys were, you know, 16, 17, 18. And they're like man, we don't understand this guy, like explain it to us. And so I was like man, we need like an introductory Bible study.
Speaker 2:You'll see here how amazing Lewis's transformation is. He's not only being a man of God studying the Bible ferociously, but he's also doing what it says he's becoming an evangelist in prison.
Speaker 1:So the prison approved it. So now the men that we were impacting and influencing and witness to on the yard as we played handball, basketball and stuff like that, lift the weights. Now we would have a formal Bible study where we come out of our house unit, sit down together, open up the word of God and really, really wrestle with the scriptures and try to help them understand and speak their language, because that that's the language I speak anyway. And so, man, I found my place. It was a wonderful place to be and then, all of a sudden, after 13 years, I got a letter from the parole board saying they wanted to interview me, and I admit I was a little excited, but reality was more prevalent in my mind, and that reality was you ain't going home no time soon, if ever. And so I went to the hearing. It went really quick, which was way different than I was told and what I expected. And then they said I'd get an answer in six weeks. Six weeks came. I sat before a man who read a piece of paper to me that said I was scheduled to be released in just two and a half more years, and I just started crying and said thank you, jesus. That was 2007.
Speaker 1:And in August of 2009, I was released after 15 and a half years and it's unbelievable. It wasn't through an appeal. I had no attorney, I had nothing in the court system. I had nothing but my faith in Christ, and I was blessed to be where I was and to be working for the Lord, doing what I was doing, and I was content with that. I really was, because I knew that heaven was my home. I knew that was eternity. Didn't know how many years I would have here on earth, but I knew it would pale in comparison to eternity with him, and so that is what the Lord impressed upon my heart and my mind and that's what I was trying my best to live out.
Speaker 2:God is so amazing in Lewis's story, things that are insurmountable to people, like three life sentences, god says OK, and he does what he's going to do Just cancels the debt, like he did with his salvation.
Speaker 1:Then I get out. I had met a young lady six years prior to that through a mutual friend. We had ridden back and forth. I proposed to her when I got told I was going to be released in a few years. We got married and that brought me up to the Chicago land area from East St Louis, illinois. And I joke and tell people I moved to Beverly Hills because where I'm at now is not Beverly Hills. I've been there but compared to where I'm from, it's Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1:And so I got up here. I was overwhelmed. My mother was dying and died a few months after I got out. My great-grandmother, who was in her early hundreds, died a few weeks after I got out. But I got the blessing of being able to see them because it would have crushed me. It would have crushed me had they died when I was his cat. So God was kind, he was so kind to me to let me spend time with them.
Speaker 1:And so I get out. I'm eager to work. This was the joke amongst me and my brothers in Christ man. When I get out I'm going to get a job at one of my three favorite places McDonald's, burger King or Taco Bell. And if they all give me a job, I'll work all three. None of them would give me a job, and I don't blame them. Who would take a 35-year-old man who never had a job, with all of these violent crimes and robberies on his jacket? I probably wouldn't have given me a job, and so that was very disheartening, and I remember talking to my mentor saying I just want to go back. I just want to go back to prison.
Speaker 1:I had a life in there. I had people I look forward to being a part of their life. People look forward to me being a part of their life, and not in a prideful way, but I was somebody and I had need, and those people in there could fulfill that need. Christ was fulfilling my need, and I just was kind of lost out here, couldn't find a church that I felt like, I connected with no smartphones, and so I had to get out of my incarcerated mind and step up to the plate in the real world, and so eventually the Lord opened the door and another miraculous way for me to get a job with the company.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot, I grew a lot, and then an opportunity came for me after about a year and a half to work for Set Free Ministries as the regional director for the state of Illinois, which meant trying to get the Bible studies that he may, as worldwide produces, into jails and prisons all over the state, and I also had to learn how to raise support, which was totally new for me. I said, hey, I'm going to do it, lord, and I'll know quickly if it's what you want me to do, because if you provide, then I guess it's a yes. And so I quit my job for no paycheck. I jumped into full-time ministry. So since then I transitioned from Seffrey Ministries to also working for Emmaus to help them grow their ministry inside the jails and prisons with the Bible courses.
Speaker 1:And then along the way, at some point we decided that we wanted to do more ministry to prisoners and not just on the inside, because there's a great need on the outside when guys get out, getting jobs, having a good, safe place to live, resources like food and transportation and clothing. And so my wife and I started going into our local juvenile prison for a couple of years. These young men just needed a safe place, some resources and some godly people around them to help them do great things and get to know Christ, and so my wife and I were like man, it'd be cool to bring some of these guys to live with us. We had a 501c formed called Philemon House, based on the book of Philemon, and all of a sudden, a guy comes out of nowhere and says I want to help you guys get a house.
Speaker 1:Helping young men who are in juvenile prison ages 16 to 21, transition from getting out by coming to live in the house with us. We help them with spirituality, we help them with academics, life skills, financial things, because if you're going to be a productive member of society and a Christ follower, you need to learn how to live in this world in a God-honoring way. So we do that, along with planting Bible studies in Cook County Jail, which is one of the largest jails in the United States. And then we also help in correspondence ministry, where these Bible studies get mailed to prisons all over the state, and so that's what we do, and so it's been a long ride since February of 1994 to now in 2025.
Speaker 2:For Lewis's last question. We asked him to give us advice Christians who know people who are coming out of prison or jail how to support them.
Speaker 1:And here's what he said If you know someone that has a felony or been in jail or prison, the first thing I would say that's good to know is that psychologically there's a lot of things going through a person's mind. Our country and even our state of Illinois right now they've banned the box, so there used to be this box that says, if you've been convicted of a felony, check this box that no longer exists on the job application they can ask you that in an interview. But at least if you can get an interview. But even though there may be opportunities, psychologically there could be things going on in that person's mind. So oftentimes we can be pushy, we're trying to get a person to do more or to live up to a standard that we may feel like we have to live up to, but not understanding the psychological trauma that that person may have experienced while they were incarcerated and just be thinking some lies in their minds that say may be planting like you're not good enough or or you did these wrong things and so you don't deserve these opportunities. And so I would say not to be too pushy but also, if you see a person kind of dragging, to try to help lift them up and show compassion and love towards them in their situation, and not just overlook it. So if you have a friend or loved one, just know that there's things going on in their mind and it could be causing them to act a certain way. It could be causing them to do a certain thing, and so be kind and gracious, be a shoulder to cry on sometimes, be a person to offer them advice if they need it, and just don't overlook them and just accept them for who they are, but don't overlook that trauma that they've been through and acknowledge that.
Speaker 1:I think to be open to a person that's incarcerated, ask them what their story is. If they're willing to share, man, what's your story? And if they say, I don't want to share, that's fine. If you ever, I would love to to get to know you, man. That's a great thing. A lot of times people has been incarcerated, no matter how long they can feel like they just won't be accepted by people who haven't been, and just somebody showing them acceptance and just saying I want to get to know you and you can tell them whatever you want to tell them and if it's genuine, they'll know. And you want to tell them, and if it's genuine they'll know, and that just makes a person feel alive.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening today. If you want to hear more about Louis Dooley's ministry Philemon House, or you are interested in the full testimony in his book Prison Saved my Life, check out our show notes the links are in there and make sure that you share today's 180 with your people. It may be the best news they hear today.
