In the conversation about building safer communities, it’s easy to get caught up in the big topics: record-breaking incarceration rates, headline-grabbing crime trends, and large pieces of criminal justice legislation.
But it’s often the littlest ones among us who are hurt the most by crime.
Don’t look now, but the holiday season is right around the corner. Thanksgiving is only two weeks away, immediately followed by the retail-driven Black Friday and Cyber Monday, encouraging people to go out and start making their Christmas purchases.
And then there is Giving Tuesday.
Thanks to our generous partners, My’lon and Montrese know that they’re loved, and that they have a friend in Jesus, who will never leave them.
A version of the following article appeared in the July issue of Pentecostal Evangel, an Assemblies of God publication.
A version of the following post originally aired as a BreakPoint commentary.
It was back in 1997, when I was practically a kid writer here at BreakPoint, that I first heard about Prison Fellowship’s amazing Angel Tree program.
I was moved by how much Chuck Colson and the Prison Fellowship staff poured themselves into making sure that thousands and thousands of prisoners’ children received gifts at Christmas time.
Parenting is one of the hardest jobs around. It takes all your strength, all your patience, and all your creativity.
But imagine how much harder it gets when the children’s father goes to prison. How does a mom explain his absence to her kids?
This past winter, Russell connected with another group of people who needed his help: the 2.7 million children in America with an incarcerated parent.
Rocio remembers it like it was yesterday. “One day there was a knock on our door,” she says. When she answered, a volunteer from a local church told her that he had been sent on behalf of her husband and Angel Tree. “He told me he had gifts for our kids from their daddy,” Rocio recalls.
These prisoners are wonderful examples of redeemed individuals working to restore themselves to their communities through morally rehabilitative in-prison programming.
Prisoners' children are experiencing God's love all year long through summer camps, mentoring relationships, and an exciting annual event called the Angel Tree Football Clinic.
On Aug. 16, nearly 30 boys and girls gathered around the entrance of the medium-security Avery Mitchell Correctional Facility in the beautiful mountains of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, to spend a day with someone they'd been missing lately: their incarcerated fathers.
A Minnesota family finds hope by sharing Christmas with a prisoner's child.
When Christmas comes this year, Michelle and her family will again be part of Angel Tree. But this year, they’ll be giving the gifts instead of receiving them.
Every week, the Lord is using Camp David of the Ozarks to reach Angel Tree kids like Caysha -- to show them His plans for them.
Today there are approximately 2.7 million children with a mom or dad behind bars in this country. There’s no easy way to tell who these boys and girls are. They are all over the country, in busy cities and sleepy towns, in gated communities and run-down projects.