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Posted August 7, 2013
Jeffery Hopper has a picture of himself and his daughter, Amanda, sitting on the couch when she was just a little girl.
“She adored me. I was her world,” Jeffery remembers. “I destroyed it by going to prison.”
“We’ll All Go Down Together”
Jeffery grew up in Port Neches, Texas, where he adopted a criminal lifestyle early on.
“I had no Christian upbringing whatsoever,” he recalls. “Bibles were not allowed in my house.” Instead, his father taught him to
Posted July 31, 2013
Thank you for participating in K Love’s pledge drive! At this time, we can no longer offer the tote bag for this radio effort. If you would like to find out more about Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program, please click here: https://www.angeltree.org.
Posted June 13, 2013
At a recent conference in England I had the opportunity to hear Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek. Bill has often said that “the local church is the hope of the world.” I couldn’t agree more! As the Body of Christ, who is the Light of the World, the local church is God’s Plan A to heal the woundedness of individuals, families, and the culture.
As part of the community, a local church has a
Posted May 16, 2013
At a graduation ceremony for students completing Prison Fellowship’s four-year Prisoners to Pastors program, a tearful dad confessed to me, “I thought my son would never complete anything but a prison sentence!”
We were at South Bay Correctional Institution in Florida. Thirty-six students – who had completed hundreds of hours of rigorous theological study – were dressed up in gowns and tassels. They were like little kids in their excitement. Most of them had never walked
Posted May 1, 2013
Sixteen-year-old Jesus is artistic. Twelve-year-old Angelina loves acting out scenes from her favorite TV shows. Ten-year-old Gabriela is a little mother hen. At almost nine years old, Martha Patricia is nurturing, and knows when someone is really hurting. Eight-year-old Emilie is a sassy little diva. And four-year-old Izrael wears his Spider-Man costume everywhere.
But the day Child Protective Services was called was a day that traumatized the Castaneda children. They didn’t understand that their drug-addicted parents
Posted April 26, 2013
A Seattle Times article recounts the story of 12-year-old Orlando, a boy whose father fled from the law and whose mother was committed to a mental hospital. Not yet a teenager, Orlando was left in charge of seven siblings, including a set of triplets still in diapers. He begged the milkman for bottles of fresh milk. He washed out the babies’ diapers with a garden hose, dried them out, and reused them. He did his
Posted April 24, 2013
Drugs. Alcohol. Incarceration. The cycle of crime swirled around little Jo'Deja and Amani, but they were innocently unaware, shielded from the upheaval of their parents' choices in the home of their grandmother.
"I didn't do anything around them," their mom, Darlene, explains. "But I was living a double life."
A CHANCE TO THRIVE
Three years ago, at the end of her rope, Darlene rediscovered the faith of her childhood, and things began to change.
"I have always been a religious person," she explains.
Posted April 4, 2013
In January, Alyson Quinn wrote a story about Angela Patton and her idea of holding father-daughter dances in prison. Such a dance was recently held at the Richmond (Virginia) City Jail, and has garnered a fair amount of media attention.
An article in the Washington Post takes a look at the event, giving a glimpse of both fathers and daughters as they prepare for the dance. In addition to providing a great gallery of memorable images,
Posted April 3, 2013
Cynthia Tilley has a black-and-white photograph of her, her brother, and her father. She doesn’t remember the occasion, but she believes it must have been taken at their Texas home around Christmastime. Wrapped gift boxes surround the father and his two tiny children.
That Christmas together, frozen in the photograph, was rare. Cynthia’s father spent most of her childhood behind bars.
“He got out once,” she remembers, “and went back in. We never had much of a
Posted February 26, 2013
Audrey Fay
I am not sure what prevented me from committing suicide. I had traveled a long, lonely road. I let circumstances from my childhood and young adult life boil inside me, until I felt angry at the whole world. I had thought that if I helped everyone around me and did everything they asked of me, they would like me, and I would find the happiness I craved. Instead, my preoccupation with pleasing others almost
Posted February 20, 2013
Joe Bruton knows how to welcome prisoners back into society. He has walked that road himself – twice. But his two experiences could not have looked more different. The first led to total failure, and the second to a whole new life.
Joe grew up in Houston, Texas. He did well in high school, but there was always alcohol around his home, and he accepted it as normal. He began drinking early and added drugs
Posted February 1, 2013
It was Christmas. My husband was in prison. Haranguing thoughts constantly harassed me.
How can I possibly forgive him? How can I ever live this down? How can I go on?
That was twenty-three years ago. Last Sunday, I fingered an Angel Tree ornament. Tears filled my eyes as I recalled how angry I’d felt two decades earlier. But many people had been the hands and feet of Jesus back then to me. They’d given me the
Posted January 28, 2013
At the beginning of January I saw a powerful model of partnership and unity in the church in action. I went to an appreciation event for Angel Tree church volunteers in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hoffmantown Church, a suburban congregation, had taken on more than 150 children in 2012, but what really stood out to me about them was they weren’t content with just delivering gifts to inmates’ children in their own backyard. Instead, under the
Posted January 23, 2013
Angela Patton is the director of Camp Diva, an organization that helps empower young women. In a TED Talk, she explains how her organization arranged a father-daughter dance for 16 men and their 18 daughters – inside the county jail! The dance gave the men a rare opportunity to show their daughters how much they cared by dancing with them, pulling out their chairs for a meal, and giving them their undivided attention. The scene
Posted January 18, 2013
Many prisoners who have found new life through Christ express their deepest convictions through a paint brush. Yet their work largely goes unseen by the outside world – until the cellblock sketches fell into the hands of the prison ministry team at Shadow Mountain Community Church in California.
Over the years, this large church nestled in the hills outside San Diego received countless unsolicited submissions from prisoners who have come to know Jesus through Shadow