Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program brought Chris back together with his son.
We first brought you the story of the Cleveland family in 2010. Recently, Prison Fellowship caught up with the father-son Angel Tree duo to learn how they are doing today.
As Christmas approaches, Prison Fellowship will continue to update our list of the counties with the most underserved Angel Tree children. The following 50 counties are those with the largest number of children signed-up for the Angel Tree program that have not yet been assigned to a church (as of 12/11/12).
Forget Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. Forget Rudolph and the sleigh. These days, Santa Claus rides a Harley-Davidson – or at least that’s how he arrived at the 2012 Angel Tree Christmas party put on by Bethany First Church of the Nazarene.
Meeting Santa at the Angel Tree Christmas party. (Photo by Kathy Marvin / Sierra Vista Herald)
Around the country, Angel Tree coordinators and volunteers are busy displaying the love of God to prisoners and their families as they prepare for Christmas.
Saturday morning I was in an inner-city elementary school in Washington, D.C., where a friend of my daughter is a teacher. What I saw and heard there broke my heart. Ninety percent of those kids lived in the projects, and despite the earnest efforts of teachers, many of them are reading far below grade level.
Eric will tell you it’s not his parents’ fault that he’s in prison. He started using drugs as a teenager and then, before long, he was selling them. When a drug deal went bad, he killed a would-be customer.
“I wasn’t raised like that,” he says.
Rushing through an airport to catch a recent flight, I was able to take advantage of a moving walkway that sped up my journey – and then another. I was about five steps onto the second one when I realized it wasn’t moving.
To say that I am a person who “hates” waiting would be a complete understatement. For me, waiting feels like a total waste of time, an empty void where nothing happens except impatience, frustration, and annoyance. Whether it involves waiting for a scheduled appointment with the doctor, it feels like they purposely make people wait; or waiting for an inattentive driver to respond to the traffic light that has already turned green for at least a second or more; or waiting for my wife to get ready so that we can get to church on time, it does not take much waiting time for me to become thoroughly impatient and irritable.
Washington Nationals’ all-star shortstop Ian Desmond was a major part of the team that returned playoff baseball to the District of Columbia for the first time in 79 years. Now, he is joining Prison Fellowship and Angel Tree to make sure that the children of incarcerated parents aren’t forgotten.
Through a partnership with the Fellowship of Fathers Foundation, 25,000 copies of a new bestselling book about fatherhood will be made available to Angel Tree dads this Christmas.
In the opening pages of Be a Better Dad Today! 10 Tools Every Father Needs, author Gregory Slayton writes, “I didn’t have much of a dad growing up.
Is your family considering participating in the Angel Tree program at your church this Christmas? If so, Prison Fellowship has a new resource available online that will help parents share with their kids the importance of serving families with a mother or a father in prison.
Every November, Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree recruits thousands of churches across the United States to join us in serving children and families. But, the need is great. Blogging about children with a parent in prison can be a simple but powerful way to raise awareness on behalf of the more than 2.7 million vulnerable and needy children in America with a parent in prison.
Due to prison overcrowding in his native Hawaii, Shane is serving his time in Arizona—3,000 miles away from his daughter and son.
In July, the Board of General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene announced a partnership with Prison Fellowship in an effort to increase the number of congregations participating in the Angel Tree Christmas program. A recent press release from the denomination reveals just how successful the campaign has been.
In prison ministry it’s easy to focus our attention on the most hardened cases. When a lifelong criminal (like the subject of this week’s feature story) turns to Jesus, it’s a real cause for celebration! But it’s also a miracle when God intervenes to turn a young person away from a hopeless lifestyle.