“MAYBE IT’S FOR ONE MORE.”
Robert “Yogi” McKee had just been denied parole.
His wife and daughters were devastated.
Jake Bodine walked over expecting Yogi to be crushed too.
Instead, Yogi looked at him and said:
“Maybe it’s for one more.”
Maybe God still had one more person inside Angola Prison that Yogi was supposed to reach.
In this episode of the God Behind Bars Podcast, Jake sits down with Yogi inside Louisiana State Penitentiary to hear the story behind a man who has spent more than 20 years incarcerated and has become a leader, mentor and servant to the men around him.
Yogi grew up in Chicago’s Cabrini Green projects. His father was absent, his mother struggled with mental illness and some of the people who stepped in to help him as a child were gang members.
As he got older, that loyalty pulled him deeper into a lifestyle that eventually led to drug dealing, robbery and prison.
While incarcerated in a Louisiana jail, Yogi says his life became increasingly dangerous. After fearing for his life, he made the decision to escape. That decision eventually led him to Angola.
He was 27 years old.
Today, he is 52.
But Yogi says the man who entered prison is not the man sitting in front of us today.
After years of isolation, a panic attack forced him to confront what his decisions had cost him. He had been disconnected from his family for years and realized that if he died in that cell, almost no one would even know.
So he cried out to Jesus.
Yogi says peace entered his life, and for the first time he began seeing a future.
From there, he earned his GED, a paralegal degree and a bachelor’s degree through Bible college. He became a certified mentor, helped lead programs for men battling addiction and now serves as a lead mentor inside Angola.
But one of the most powerful moments in Yogi’s journey came when his mother died.
Yogi was angry with God.
Then he found letters from his mom describing how she had started going to church, stopped using drugs, gotten baptized and given her life to Christ.
Yogi realized that God had used his own transformation to help lead his mother to Jesus.
That moment changed the way he viewed everything.
Parole.
Loss.
Prison.
His future.
His purpose.
Today Yogi says that while he is still inside Angola, he will continue serving until God says his assignment there is finished.
“If it’s just for one, then it’s worth it.”
This is Yogi’s story.
At God Behind Bars, our mission is to introduce inmates to Jesus and connect them to the local church. We believe no life is too far gone and that God can bring redemption, purpose and transformation into even the darkest places.
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