"It hardly seemed like the weather for thinking about Christmas, but even so, a crowd of men made their way over to our table to fill out Angel Tree applications."
NFL players speak out for justice, and other incarceration and criminal justice news from this week for you to catch up on.
Crack cocaine. Prostitution. Murder. Lisa was running from a past haunted by her crimes. And the fear and guilt were overwhelming.
Interested in prison outreach but don't know where to start? Here are five ways you can make an impact through Angel Tree!
It is a story of adoption. It is a story of the lost being found. It is a story about God.
"I did everything but join a gang," Roderick McNeely remembers. "I was trying to kill myself."
At nine years old, Desmond is already well aware of the troubles of the world. His prayers reflect how his father's incarceration has affected him: "I pray for Jesus to help me and my mom out with our house and food and bills," he shares.
"I can't believe you want to know my story. No one has ever asked me my story. No one has ever cared before."
In high school, Mary Kay Beard placed at the top of her graduating class. A few years down the road, she was on the FBI's top ten most-wanted list.
For the past two summers, Ben Wade has worked as a counselor at Frontier Camp, a Christian camp in Grapeland, Texas. Most of the time, being a camp counselor is pretty straightforward. But the week that the Angel Tree® kids arrive is different.
Life at home was a nightmare for friends Paige and Macie. They desperately needed a refuge. They found support at Angel Tree Camping.
Palmer appeared to be on his way to becoming another tragic statistic. He appeared to be on his way to becoming another tragic statistic—a broken life destined for destruction and possibly prison.
"Prison life is exciting and terrible at the same time," begins Richard in this week's Insider. "There's violence, there's rape—[there are] things that go on that you'll never hear people talk about."
The following article was originally published in Spring 2017 edition of Inside Journal. Inside Journal is a quarterly newspaper published by Prison Fellowship® just for prisoners.
Beau is an Angel Tree Camping® volunteer who spent four years stationed in Hawaii for the military. For three of those years he served as a mentor at Camp Agape, a summer camp founded as a ministry to prisoners' children. Beau has since taken the model of Camp Agape to start a camp in Arkansas.