Unstoppable Love

Angel Tree Participants Learn to Keep on Giving

Becky Beane

 

Mary Stanley barely stands five feet, but as a high school teacher she boldly confronted a towering, rebellious student. “Every day you come in here mean and upset,” she told him. “But I don’t care how bad you treat me. You can’t stop me from loving you.” Then she smiled.

 

From that moment on, even his classmates saw a transformation. “It was like something dropped off him” says Mary—his defensive walls, his shield of anger. Love changed him.

But sparkling Mary—who just retired from teaching 33 years of high school business classes—knows such love didn’t come from her. “I always said I’m not a teacher only by profession, but by possession. I believe that God ordained me to teach”—and it was His love “that permeated my classroom.

 

”Mary believes that for any Christian, “your purpose is to help show others their purpose, to let them know they have value, that they are somebody special” as creations of God.

 

That compelling vision has likewise energized Mary’s involvement with Angel Tree®, Prison Fellowship’s ministry to the children of prisoners. She coordinates the outreach at Saint Paul UAME Church in Wilmington, Delaware, which provides gifts for at least 125 local children every Christmas. Children and caregivers are treated to a huge party that includes dinner, games, music, skits or puppet shows . . . and the delivery of beautifully wrapped gifts, purchased by members of the congregation and given on behalf of the children’s incarcerated parents.

 

But at Saint Paul, the Christmas party is the year’s grand finale to an Angel Tree ministry that has flourished all year long—while, to many prisoners’ families, it may be the introduction to a lasting relationship of encouragement and support.