Indie band The Offset posted this message on our Angel Tree Facebook wall yesterday:
Playing a benefit concert for the Angel Tree program at Groveton Baptist Church [Alexandria, VA] Saturday December 3rd! Come out and bring a toy for admission to see some awesome bands and contribute to something great!
They could not have looked any more different. Doug was short, slight, white-haired, clean-shaven, and quite proper. John was tall, brawny, broad, dark haired, goateed, tattooed, rugged, and weather -worn. Doug was an upper-middle-class, Buick-driving suburbanite. John was a battle-hardened and road-weary motorcycle gang member.
Ed extended his hand to thank me for all Prison Fellowship had done for him.
He had been in prison for over 20 years and was incarcerated in a state far from his family. He saw his mom once a year when she flew to visit him.
Every year, Prison Fellowship assists churches in ministering to the families of incarcerated parents through its Angel Tree program. Angel Tree is a ministry that reaches out to the children of inmates and their families with the love of Christ, offering churches an opportunity to share Christ’s love by serving the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the families of prisoners.
In a statement released today, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., Henry Juszkiewicz, has endorsed the Right on Crime’s Statement of Principles. Justice Fellowship partners with the Right on Crime initiative for criminal justice solutions.
Explaining why he endorsed the Right on Crime principles, Juszkiezicz said:
“I am proud to endorse Right on Crime.
Join COPE November 1-4, 2011 for our 2011 International Conference in Melbourne/Indialantic, Florida. The conference brochure are now available on our website. Discover new resources for use in your ministry, renew old acquaintances while making new ones, be encouraged in your calling, and renew your strength while enjoying the peaceful sounds of the ocean.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as … a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit– immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
Do you know how you sometimes plan to serve someone and you end up being served? A few weeks ago I was in southern California at a celebration of The Urban Ministry Initiative (TUMI), a joint partnership between Prison Fellowship and World Impact to train inmates to serve as pastors.
Roughly 230,000 prisoners, the population size of Orlando, Florida, are serving life sentences within U.S. prisons. Writing for the Associated Press, Michael Virtanen reports on the debate taking place regarding older prisoners and whether they should be released from prison due to overcrowding.
“A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man,however much we have suffered from him.”
On October 13, the city of Riviera Beach, California, sponsored a jobs fair for non-violent ex-prisoners. Nearly 1,000 men and women attended, greatly exceeding the number of participants expected by organizers and overflowing the recreation center hosting the event.
The event was not an aberration.
Gibson Guitar hand crafts more than 160,000 guitars every year in Nashville, TN and generates revenue of $500 million.
In a recent article, Newsmax reports that the guitar maker lost an estimated $2 to 3 million in revenue over the raid.
Imagine being freed from prison. Now, think about the challenge of being released at midnight with no place to go.
Brandi Grissom, writing in The New York Times, reveals what happens when prisoners are released in the wee hours of the morning with no home, no money, no phone and no plan other than living on the street.
On November 15, John and Gina Carey and the Urban Soul Project will be performing a free concert at Faith Community Church in Thousand Palms, California, to benefit the Angel Tree program. The couple will be performing original selections from their new recordings, New Beginnings (John Carey) and Melodic (Gina Carey).
In an October 14 commentary in the Orlando Sentinel, Prison Fellowship vice president and director of Justice Fellowship Pat Nolan talks about the growing population in Florida prisons, and the problems that is causing. “Florida’s population has almost doubled since 1980, but the state’s prison population has grown even faster — five-fold during those years,” says Nolan.