Where it All Began
Where it All Began
Six million. That’s the cumulative number of prisoners’ children served by Angel Tree® in the
And an ex-prisoner started it all.
“I am both awed and humbled to have been a part of something so enormously effective,” says Mary Kay Beard. “Being there at the beginning—I consider it one of the highest privileges of my life.”
Mary Kay was a safecracker, a bank robber, and one of
On the three Christmases that she spent at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in
“Most children wouldn’t think much of such small gifts, but in prison there was such joy on their faces!” says Mary Kay. “It didn’t really matter to them what they got; it was from Mama.”
Remembering the Children
After being paroled, Mary Kay accepted Prison Fellowship’s challenge to become their first Alabama State Director in 1982. One of her assignments was to create a Christmas project for prisoners. At one of her speaking engagements, a conversation with an ex-prisoner’s daughter solidified the project’s focus.
“What about the inmate’s kids?” the woman asked. “They are the real victims.”
Mary Kay recalled the toiletries that prisoners gave their children on Christmas. So she and a crew of volunteers began creating a program to provide real gifts for prisoners’ children.
Their plan was to erect a Christmas tree at
So Mary Kay helped cut out 100 paper-angel ornaments and then visited prisoners to invite them to sign up their children.
“God never wastes anything,” Mary Kay says. “He used my own criminal past to give me credibility in their eyes. And they trusted us.”
Mary Kay called the caretakers of the children and asked what they wanted for Christmas. Then, she wrote each child’s name and the “gift wishes” on an angel ornament.
On the day after Thanksgiving—the busiest retail day of the year—an Angel Tree greeted shoppers at the top of the mall’s escalator. An advertisement in the Birmingham News had notified readers of the project. Many of the store owners agreed to offer a 10-percent discount to shoppers who bought their Angel Tree gifts there.
The response was overwhelming. That weekend, shoppers took all 100 angels to buy gifts. So Mary Kay visited more prisons, called more caretakers, and put more angels on the tree.
She and the volunteers wrapped gifts and made sure they would get to the right child. Then Mary Kay called the caregivers of the prisoners’ children to pick up the presents. She mobilized the Gideons and the Birmingham News deliverers to take gifts to children who lived far away.
That year 556 children received gifts—but the effects spread even farther. “In January, all of my Bible study groups at that prison doubled or tripled,” said Mary Kay. “The newcomers were the inmates whose children had received gifts.”
The next year, Angel Tree branched out to 12 states and soon became a church-based program. Now—as PF’s most popular program—it reaches prisoners’ children not only throughout the
Not Just for Christmas Anymore
Angel Tree now encourages and equips churches to reach out to prisoners’ children and their caregivers year-round—helping to restore family bonds and break the generational cycle of crime.
More and more churches now welcome prisoners’ families into their existing church services and ministries. And many provide other special outreaches, such as sending the children to Christian summer camps and matching the children with caring adult mentors.
I just can't hardly describe how joyful it feels to reach out to the families especially this time of year during what could be an otherwise possibly difficult time of year!
Abbey
