Prison Fellowship

Addicted to misery and clutching a thick wad of twenties in his coat pocket, repeat offender Steven Gass stumbles down 19th Street. Word on the street: Omar Shabazz is back in South Philly from his stay in a California prison, and “the man’s got a terrible package.”

 

Omar knows Steven’s mission without even asking. He also knows that it is only five paces to his gun, hidden in the wheel base of a nearby car, and another 15 paces to the abandoned house where he hides what Steven is itching for. But neither man knows that they are less than five blocks and a few years from the church whose open doors will change their lives completely. Nor do they know that as ex-offenders their lives will intersect once again—but not as a dealer and a slave to addiction.

In Central Philly, Irene Mitchell turns on the evening news. “A young African-American male shot nine times and left dead.” Irene responds as any mother would, with horror and a prayer for the poor mother who lost her son. What Irene does not know is that she is that mother and the boy is her son. Nor does Irene know that just a few years and a few blocks away, she will become the spiritual mother to released prisoners just like her son’s murderer.

 

Sitting on the thin cot of a Philadelphia women’s prison, four-time offender Sheila Silver wonders how she could possibly have broken her vow to never come back. Dejected and alone, Sheila does not yet know that hope is literally around the corner; a church group from True Gospel Tabernacle has come inside the prison to bring the doubly good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and their church’s aftercare program. Nor does Sheila know that just a few miles and a few months away, she will return to the open arms of a church that will finally feel like home.