Jailhouse ministries abound in U.S. penal institutions, but one such outreach that targets inmates with a sweet tooth has a positive effect prisonwide, inmates and prison officials say.

Kairos, an international, nondenominational prison ministry that operates at four Ohio sites, offers a three-day course in Christianity in which volunteers meet with about 40 inmates. What makes Kairos different is homemade cookies -- the calling card of a ministry that seeks to demonstrate God's love to the entire institution.

"The prisoners never get homemade cookies," said volunteer Tony Peter of Cincinnati, who works with Kairos at the Lebanon Correctional Institution for men. "It's really a treat for them -- really. We can't understand it. They get enough to fill up, and there's always enough to go around."

But the cookies are just part of an overall experience designed to encourage prisoners to seek a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, said Christine Money, warden of Ohio's Marion Correctional Institution for men. Money helped start Kairos at Marion in 1996 and at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville when she was warden there in 1994.

"I look at Kairos as a valued partner in salvaging lives ravaged by dysfunction, drugs and crime," said Money, who is one of three U.S. wardens appointed to the national Kairos board. Kairos is a Greek word meaning "a chosen time," and Money said "God's Special Time" is the theme of each Kairos weekend.

At a Kairos weekend at Marysville, 55 volunteers bake 10,000 dozen -- that's 120,000 -- homemade cookies to bring to the 1,700 inmates and 500 staff members at the prison.

"We know that each of the cookies has been individually prayed over by the outside team members and volunteers," said Marysville inmate Michelle Barrett, 33, of Columbus. "They are a symbol to us of a faith that satisfies."

"I was on one of the first Kairos weekends six years ago," Barrett said. "Before that, no one trusted anyone here for anything."

A Kairos weekend features 15 talks and skits with a pointed focus on forgiveness for both self and others, said Marysville Chaplain Bonnie Frost. Back in the cellblocks at night, the cookies help the prisoners implement what they have learned during the day.

"The first night, the prisoners on the weekend take a grocery bag stuffed with cookies back to their cottages (cells)," explained Marysville inmate Trina Turner, 40, of Cincinnati. "Most prisoners share the cookies with the other inmates there. The second night, the prisoners take back two grocery bags filled with cookies. The first one they can keep or share with other prisoners.

"The second bag is called 'forgiveness cookies.' You take the cookies to the one person in prison you have a broken relationship with as an offering of fellowship," Turner said. "The act is very powerful, and it breaks down a lot of barriers."

She and Barrett went through Kairos several years ago and now volunteer on the weekends.

Every guard, all other staff members and each of the 1,700 inmates also receives a gift of two dozen cookies from a team of inmate helpers during the weekend.

"The transformation these women go through in just three days is remarkable," said Marysville Warden Deborah Timmerman-Cooper. "Before Kairos, many female offenders have never experienced unconditional love. Each inmate leaves Kairos a better person, embarking on a Christian journey, and this has a positive impact on other inmates and the prison as a whole."

Kairos is active in 230 prisons in 29 states and several foreign countries, says the program's national Web site at www.kairosprisonministry.org. More than 120,000 incarcerated men and women have experienced a weekend organized by Kairos, which is based in Winter Park, Fla.

The Rev. Gary Sims, North Region religious services administrator for the Ohio Department of Corrections in Columbus, says the program reaches beyond the prison walls to prisoners' families.

"It's a solid program that combines the faith communities of people on the outside world with people who are incarcerated," Sims said. "Not only can the power of God seriously impact a person while in prison, but it can impact the entire family as well."

Outside volunteers are key to making the weekend happen and in assisting with monthly Kairos reunion groups at the prisons. Hope Seel of Marysville, chairwoman of the state Kairos committee, said seeing God work in the lives of prisoners is "forever new" for herself and other lay people.

"We have about 250 volunteers who help at Lebanon," Peter said. "Kairos started over 10 years ago at Lebanon, and we have seen over 1,000 male prisoners make the weekend."

"Kairos is organized twice a year at Marysville, and we also have a similar program for youth offenders here called Epiphany," said Frost, the chaplain.

"At every corner now I see one of my sisters," said Anntoinette Brooks, 22, of Dayton, who has been at Marysville since she was 17 and attended Epiphany when she was 18. "I was raised to go to church but never believed any of it. I had been told that God chooses us and calls us each by name, but I knew he didn't know mine!

"Then, the first morning of my Epiphany weekend, they gave each of us a birthday party. I never had one. I got a cake -- a whole cake -- and it had my name on it -- spelled right! It changed my whole life."

"Because of Kairos, today I have a future," Turner said. "I am grounded and rooted in a way that I never have been before. I am determined to stay on the right path for a long time."

Ann Rhyan is a free-lance writer who lives in Sidney, about 30 miles north of Dayton.