In the Company of Others

Becky Beane

The following story originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Inside Out online magazine.  To subscribe to Inside Out, click here.

 

Jill Colon gave her life to Christ the first time she was in prison, but back on the outside she followed her husband into a drug-destructive lifestyle. Otherwise, “I was afraid he would leave me,” as he had done once before, she recalls.

She knew it was the wrong choice. “God kept talking to me in the back of my head, constantly convicting me of stuff I was doing.” Then one day, while waiting for her husband to return from a heroin buy, “I found myself praying to God that he would have the drugs in hand. And I thought, You can’t pray that!” So Jill decided to “leave God alone” and broke off all communication with Him.

 

But things only “got worse and worse and worse,” she discovered. She and her husband fought. With so much money going for drugs, “we couldn’t pay the rent and had to move again and again.” A college graduate, but with a prison record, “I could only get crummy jobs” that required two-hour bus rides back and forth because neither she nor her husband had a driver’s license. “It’s easy not to want to go to work,” Jill explains. “And then you have to resort to doing the wrong things in order to survive.”

 

She violated her post-prison probation, prompting a warrant for her arrest—though their frequent moves helped her avoid being caught. But one day, after another screaming match with her husband, “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” Jill recalls. So she walked to the county jail near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to turn herself in.

 

On her way up the steps, she renewed a broken relationship. “I asked God to go with me and help me.”

 

After more than year in the jail, Jill was transferred to Florida’s Broward Correctional Institution. When she came within 18 months of being released, she applied for a newly created Prison Fellowship reentry/aftercare program. And that’s when she met Ginger Martin and Esther Martinez.

 

Dedicated Duo

For years Ginger and Esther have worked together and ministered together. Ginger is president of American National Bank in Oakland Park, where Esther serves as her vice-president of loan operations. Both also attend Christian Life Center, an Assembly of God church devoted to outreach. “So whenever I volunteered for something, I’d volunteer Esther, too!” Ginger says with a laugh. After all, “when Jesus sent the disciples out, He sent them out by twos.” As the newer Christian’s mentor, Ginger figured the ministry opportunities “would help Esther grow in the Lord.”

 

Therefore, in 2004, when Ginger heard about Operation Starting Line^TM, an evangelistic campaign launched by Prison Fellowship, she encouraged Esther to join her in being trained to take the Gospel to prisoners. As with many of the OSL volunteers, it was their first time inside prison. “Afterward some people said, ‘I never want to do this again,’ but I definitely had a heart for the women,” says Ginger, speaking of the prisoners they visited at Broward Correctional Institution. After the evangelistic event, she—with Esther of course—led follow-up Bible studies at the prison. Then they agreed to be part of Prison Fellowship’s new aftercare team, helping prepare soon-to-be released prisoners for their transition to the outside.

 

As Jill’s mentors, they met with her twice a month for more than a year. Because of her past struggles with drugs, they began with Celebrate Recovery, a Christ-centered 12-step program. Then they moved on to life-skills training—résumé writing, anger management, goal setting, and other issues. They talked about Jill’s specific struggles, encouraged her in her walk with the Lord, prayed with her. Loved her.

 

“I don’t even think they know they were the only outside contact I had the entire time I was there,” says Jill, her voice trembling with emotion. Her husband had moved to New York. Her mother had cut her off—a decision of last resort that Jill considers justified though still painful. “I had hurt her over and over.” So during her three years of incarceration, Jill didn’t speak to anyone on the phone, didn’t receive any mail, didn’t get any visits—except for Ginger and Esther. “And they came, every time.”

 

Jill admits she was leery at first when the two women assured her they would help her get a job, housing, and other resources after release. “People in my life have continually disappointed me,” she says. “They promise you a whole lot of stuff, but essentially nothing happens. So it took a little while for me to actually grasp that they weren’t like other people. And the trust built up.”

 

Ginger and Esther weren’t working alone. People at their bank donated clothes so Jill would have something to wear other than the clothes on her back when she walked out of prison. Prison Fellowship staff and volunteers collected money for Jill’s prescribed diabetes and blood pressure medications. Church members donated gift cards from various stores to provide for basic needs. And their church solved the most immediate hurdle for released prisoners without a welcoming family—a safe place to live.

 

For five years, Christian Life Center and Points of Hope have run the Samaritan Home, a transitional house for adult female graduates of Teen Challenge—the nationally renowned Christ-centered, residential drug-recovery program for adolescents and adults. The church got involved when Cindy Levy, wife of the outreach ministries pastor, noticed that the local Teen Challenge directors had several young women who had graduated from the program, yet had nowhere to go except “back to hideous situations,” they told her. Alerted to that dilemma, Christian Life Center bought a house nearby to offer the women a Christ-centered bridge back into society. So far, more than 20 Teen Challenge grads have benefited from living in the home, moving on to become successful, hard-working, Christ-following citizens.

 

Even so, when Ginger approached the church about taking in a soon-to-be-released prisoner, some had reservations. Jill was in her late forties; the Teen Challenge women were usually younger. The Teen Challenge graduates in the home had come out of a rigorous Bible-based program. Jill was coming out of prison—and what kind of issues did she bring with her?

 

But Ginger, who had spent months working with Jill on many of her “issues,” assured the church leadership that “we’re not going to bring anyone into this home who is going to be a detriment.” Ginger had been a long-time member of Christian Life Center; they trusted her recommendation. And Pastor Max Yeary, senior shepherd of Christian Life Center, reminded them all of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan—for whom their transitional house is named. “When he cared for that victim, there was a cost,” the pastor pointed out. “But he took care of him anyway.” They would welcome Jill as a resident of the Samaritan Home.

 

Heading Home

Last March Jill walked out the prison gate and into the open arms of Ginger and Esther, who had been waiting for her in the parking lot. “The first thing we were looking forward to doing was just being able to hug, hug, hug her,” says Ginger, whose natural demonstrative tendencies were stifled in prison, where the only physical contact permitted was a handshake. Then they treated Jill to a picnic in the park before taking her to her new home.

 

The Samaritan Home comes with rules: a curfew, a church dress code, assigned chores, church attendance on Sundays and Wednesday nights, involvement in a Monday Bible study, no coarse talk or gossiping. The residents must pay $50 a week for rent, so they need to get jobs—and several have been employed by the church itself. Jill quickly found a full-time job at a Dunkin Donuts, within walking distance of the house—an important benefit since she doesn’t have a car (and still dislikes long bus rides). “It pays a decent amount of money,” she says, “and hopefully in a few months I will have saved enough to take some kind of computer class” that will enable her to seek a job more suitable to her education and skills. “I’m smart, I can calculate anything,” she says. But she’s also aware that the kind of job she prefers would require computer know-how, “so I need to take care of that.”

 

Susanne Menendez, a Teen Challenge graduate and now the Samaritan Home resident assistant, is helping Jill toward that goal. Paychecks—minus rent, church tithe, and a basic weekly allowance—are turned over to Pastor Sol Levy, who deposits the money in a savings account for each resident. By the time the women leave in several months, many have accumulated a substantial nest egg of $5,000 or more. That’s enough to buy a used car, get a more permanent place to live, pursue their education.

 

At times Jill has mentally balked at the rules. “Sometimes I feel I was in prison for so long, and I’m out now. I should be able to be in control of my own money,” she says. “But I haven’t wanted for anything. And the benefits of living here far outweigh the little things that might bother me.”

 

What benefits does she mean? “It’s been a long time since I could put my head down where nobody was going to knock on the door to arrest me. It’s been a long time since I had peace and felt safe. And that’s how it is now.”

 

That sense of peace and security is anchored by such people as Ginger and Esther, Suzanne, Cindy and Pastor Sol, Pastor Max Yeary, and the other members of Christian Life Fellowship who have embraced Jill as part of their family.

 

One recent Sunday morning, Ginger noticed a woman sitting beside Jill in the pew, her arm draped affectionately around Jill’s shoulders. “It reminded me of taking someone under your wing,” Ginger describes.

 

“The people at the church are wonderful,” says Jill, who has joined in some of Christian Life Center’s outreach ministries to people in the outlying communities, such as children’s activities and medical or job fairs.

 

Without Prison Fellowship’s aftercare program, Jill speculates, she most likely would have gone to New York, where her husband is, and “started this whole thing over again”—referring to the drug abuse that still ensnares him. She prays that her husband “would find his way,” as she has found hers in Christ. A way more easily traveled in the caring company of others.

 

Note: Since this story was written in 2008, Jill’s husband passed away. He restored his relationship with the Lord and with Jill before he died.

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