Seventeen years ago, Doug Shockley was set free from prison. But he didn't want to be set free.

He'd served four years for attempted sex assault of a minor. He was scared to walk out the door of the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center. He was sure someone would shoot him for what he'd done, maybe with a silencer on a gun. That's what people told him in prison.

Come on, Doug. Let's go.

A man named Art Lindsay, one of Doug's prison ministers, picked him up that day. After coaxing Doug out, Art threw Doug's belongings into the back of his car. It was a Sunday morning. Art drove him straight to Grace Community Evangelical Church, near 70th and South streets.

That was the church where Stan Schrag preached. Stan had counseled Doug in prison, too. Art had been the outgoing one, the talker. Stan had been the quiet one, the listener. They were the only two people Doug felt cared about him.

Doug wanted to sit in the back row of the church, so he would be ready for the man with the gun. But Stan made Doug sit in the front row while he preached. With his back to the people, Doug's fear grew.

Then a grinning woman sat down next to him.

Honey, you're coming to my house for dinner today.

No, I'm not, Doug said. I'm going with him.

He pointed to Stan.

Well, she said, I'm his wife.

Later, at their home, she asked him: Is there anything you're hungry for? He thought for a moment.

Yes, he said. Fried green tomatoes.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Green tomatoes

Two eggs

1/8 to ¼ cup water

Flour

Bread crumbs

Slice the tomatoes. Beat eggs and water. Dip tomato slices into egg mixture and then into flour/bread crumb mixture. Fry in vegetable oil until golden brown on both sides.

Doug grew up in western Nebraska. He was short, fat and ugly. Bullied. He started slicing his skin at age 7 with sharp sticks and pieces of glass. In school one day, kids found him bloody in a bathroom stall.

He felt love from only one person, his grandma.

He got to stay with her one week each summer. She made him perfect pancakes, fried green tomatoes from the garden and her specialty: chicken and noodles served the old-school German way, over mashed potatoes.

The way to make a friend, his grandma told him, is through the stomach.

She taught him how to flip perfect pancakes. She gave him hugs, and her recipes.

He was 15 in 1976, the summer his grandma died. She had a stroke a week after his visit. At her funeral, the Lutheran church was standing-room-only. Flowers everywhere.

On the west wall of the sanctuary was a beautiful stained-glass window - a cross, a lamb. Doug had always liked the way the afternoon sun shined through it and made that image on the floor.

The day of the funeral, he saw that cross and that lamb. He saw it fall onto his grandma's casket right as the pastor was talking about how he had no doubt that this woman was sitting at the feet of Jesus.

But his grandma's funeral was in the morning, not the afternoon. There was no way the sun should have been shining through that window.

He never forgot that moment. Or how an adult had made him kiss his grandma's cheek and how it felt like kissing a cold clam and how he screamed and ran out of the church.

Doug spent time in foster care. He was 19 when he shot himself, in an apartment in North Platte. He wanted to be with his grandma again.

The bullet went through his stomach.

Chicken and Noodles

1 chicken, cut into pieces

Put chicken into large kettle. Cover with water, salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat several hours until chicken is completely done. Remove chicken from liquid. Cool and debone. Discard skin and bones. Add chicken back to the liquid (broth).

Noodles:

2 cups flour

Dash of salt

2 eggs, beaten

milk or water

Combine flour, salt, eggs and enough liquid to make soft dough. Roll on floured surface to 1/8- to ¼-inch thick. Dry for several hours. Cut into the width and length for the size of noodles you like. Bring chicken and broth to a boil. Add noodles. Turn heat down and cook slowly until the noodles are not doughy. If still thin, you can thicken with cornstarch and water.

Serve over mashed potatoes.

Doug served rhubarb cake one recent day in his apartment near East Campus. Rhubarb cake is one of his specialties. He learned it from his grandma.

"Oh, this is delicious," says Pastor Stan's wife, Carlene. She sits on a chair near Doug. Stan and Art sit on the couch.

They've been here many times, invited by Doug for food and fellowship. They are his new family, which he started making from scratch that first day he was set free.

Art is an "uncle." Stan and Carlene are "Mom" and "Dad."

Over the years, Doug has added aunts, uncles, cousins, grandkids, brothers and sisters, grandma and grandma (who are actually younger than Stan and Carlene, "Mom" and "Dad").

One time, he had maybe 40 people squeezed into this living room.

"It's a dysfunctional family," he says. "In a good way."

He smiles.

"It's my God-given family."

They love his cooking. They love him. It took him years to realize this, he says. He had trust issues. He kept cutting himself.

He offers another piece of the brown cake, sliced into rectangles.

"Most people don't like rhubarb," he says. "So I figure if you make it into a cake, they'd eat it and not ever know it."

"Who doesn't like rhubarb?" Art says.

"Lots of people," Doug says.

Rhubarb Coffee Cake

1 ½ cups brown sugar

1 egg

½ cup shortening

2 cups flour

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups cubed rhubarb

Topping:

½ cup sugar

½ cup chopped nuts

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Cream together brown sugar, egg and shortening. Add all other cake ingredients. Put in greased pan and sprinkle the topping on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until done.

"Is there anything you're hungry for?"

Carlene had asked Doug Shockley that question the day he was set free from prison.

He didn't get to eat fried green tomatoes in prison. His grandma used to make them. His grandma had told him how, in the Depression, she ate fried green tomatoes as a substitute for meat.

He was hungry for Jesus, too.

It had taken two or three years for Art and Stan to get through to Doug in prison. In the visiting room, Doug would argue with them over some of the dumbest things. For instance, Doug told them that in the Old Testament, it says you don't eat pork. So you're going to hell if you eat pork.

He kept missing the point, and the point was God's love.

They refused to argue with him.

"And then one day," Art says, "it seemed like a light bulb exploded in his head. And he's been receptive to teaching ever since."

At first, Doug lived in a halfway house. He got a job. After a few years, he started helping Art do fellowship night in prison. Art, gray-haired now, has been doing prison ministry since he was 18. He asked Doug to take over. Doug didn't think he could.

Come on, Doug. Yes, you can.

The prisoners looked up to him, listened to him even more, in some ways, than to Art. Doug had been in their prison shoes.

Over the years, Doug cooked many Thanksgiving dinners for other ex-cons at the halfway house where he used to live. But his grandma never made pies, so that was one thing he didn't know how to make.

Art and Carlene taught him how.

"To make a good pie crust," Art says, "you have to be willing to fail."

Pie Crust

1 cup shortening

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups flour

Blend with pastry blender. Add 5 tablespoons cold water. Roll together in hands. Roll out on a floured surface.

They taught him how to trust, too. They taught him how to compile all his recipes into a cookbook. It's called "Cooking From the Heart."

People liked his cooking so much they bought every copy. Carlene's book is marked up in pencil with notes. She wrote this next to the recipe for the rhubarb cake:

Excellent!!!

In 2001, Art drove with Doug to western Nebraska to go to his grandpa's funeral. That meant a lot to Doug, but he still felt as if his new family would die or abandon him.

He still felt as if confessing his sins was enough to be saved. He didn't believe what he'd heard in Sunday school, that he had to ask the Lord to be the lord of his life.

Then one day, in August 2008, he lay in bed in a depression. He thought about cutting himself. He thought about his grandma. He thought about taking a bunch of sleeping pills.

OK, Lord. I will make you the Lord of my life.

He slept like a baby. The next morning, everything was different. All thoughts of suicide were gone.

"I can't explain it."

And he woke with a mission.

B-B-Que

Beef roast or pork roast (you can use one of each, if small)

Cook slowly until it falls apart. Cool. Pull apart.

B-B-Q Sauce:

1 (20-ounce) bottle ketchup

1 onion, diced

2 to 3 tablespoons Tabasco sauce (prefer more)

¼ cup brown sugar

1 to 2 tablespoons mustard

1 tablespoon vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Broth from meat

Mix all together and pour over meat. Heat well. Serve on hamburger buns.

The man once scared of a gun now stands before a crowd of friends and his "family" in the basement of the Grace Community Evangelical Church. Doug asks for donations for a prison ministry he's beginning, and for prayers.

The room smells like a home-cooked supper. He made more than enough food for everyone: a big bowl of fruit salad, a hill of Snickerdoodle cookies, his B-B-Que, served on buns.

He thanks them for coming.

"Jesus didn't come to take care of the healthy people, the religious people," he says. "He came to take care of the sick. I'm going to try to be an advocate for the men in prison and help churches understand what the men need when they get out. For example: Most men need to know that somebody cares about them. And if they don't know that somebody cares, why not go back? At least they have a roof over their head, a bed, three meals. ...

"We all need to know that somebody cares."

Serve warm.

And he tells them that God gave him the name for the ministry, too.

Set Free Ministry.

Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.