“It all came crashing down in 2011,” Beth Gadjica begins in this week’s Insider. “I got sentenced to two years in state jail for possession under one gram. I thought my life was over.”“There was one solution,” she says. “I handed my life over to Christ.”
Incarcerated at the age of 21, Beth soon found out that she was pregnant with her third child. She was accepted into the Baby and Mother Bonding Initiative unit (BAMBI) in Texas. BAMBI allowed Beth to keep her newborn son with her, resulting in a healthy parent-child bond. And that was just the beginning of a very different life.
While in BAMBI, Beth began to participate in Prison Fellowship® classes. “My life changed. I developed a personal relationship with Christ and there was hope for the future,” she says.
Today, Beth is out of jail. She’s received custody of all three of her kids, and she works for a Christian chiropractic office. In the fall, she plans on going back to school. In the meantime, she rejoices: “My life is better than ever!”
Beth first shared her story with us in 2015. She has returned to prison as a volunteer three times since her release. Using her own experience with incarceration as a backdrop, Beth is able to encourage and support female prisoners in a way that gives them hope for their own future releases. And volunteering keeps Beth accountable and “on the straight and narrow.”
“I love being a volunteer for Prison Fellowship. It’s amazing, and I look forward to the next time I get to go volunteer again.”
OTHER STORIES YOU MIGHT LIKE
THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM: RAISING CRIMINALS OR CHAMPIONS? A part of raising champions for Christ is to think outside the bars.
BORN BEHIND BARS Since the early 1990s, there has been a resurgence of prison nurseries.