From the Archives: 2008

C.S. Lewis has written that raw kindness does not care so much whether its object becomes good or bad, but only that it does not suffer. God sees wickedness, and not pain, as the ultimate misfortune, and so he is willing for us to suffer in order to make us good. Sadly, pleasure and prosperity rarely make a man or woman better than before, unless the soul has already advanced far on the heavenward road.

------

Visitors

In early spring a foolish robin built her nest in the side of our apartment building, right along the stairwell. I could have reached out and touched her with my hand. As I came around the corner, I always stopped to look at her, and she watched me warily with her round black eyes.

After a few weeks came her three eggs, blue and reflective as turquoise stones. During the raging storms of summer evenings, she spread her brown pinion feathers over the sides of her nest, that the eggs might not know a drop of moisture.

My husband and I looked in on her every day. We regarded her as a friend, a fellow sojourner surviving in our corner of Fairfax. We rejoiced and cooed when out of the eggs broke three robin chickens with pink, translucent skin.

But a couple days later I found the nest empty. No chicks. No robin. No trace of shell or feather. They have never returned. I suspect the grey housecat that lives on the first floor. Jim thinks the mother “carried them to a new nest,” which he says either to comfort me or to comfort himself. I cannot believe it.

We still glance reflexively into the nest when we come down the stairs, though nothing changes.

Then this summer there came a mint-green luna moth with a fuzzy, white body and antennae like tiny ferns. Dramatic plumes curled from its back wings. Day after day it stayed motionless by the lintel of our door. Once I made him to crawl up on my finger and brought him into the apartment. I called him Simon, spoke to him, and tried to feed him sugar water, as I used to do with monarch butterflies. I put his feet in the water, since moths and butterflies have their taste receptors in their toes, if they can be said to have toes. But I found out later that it did no good. Luna moths live for only a week, their sole purpose to mate before death.

I took him out into the stand of trees in our complex, hoping that there he might have better luck.

He to Whom We Call

We use it all the time. We whisper it. We curse it. We sing it. It’s part of our basest slang and our most sacred expressions. But where does the English word “god” actually come from?

The other languages I am familiar with all have a Latin base. The word for “god” in Latin languages comes, originally, from “zeus”. It survives in English in terms like deism or theology.

I’ll cover the Latin roots in a follow-up post, but the roots of “god” are not Latin, but rather an ancient Germanic language. Many of English’s most basic words come from this source: man, woman, child, hunger, thirst, sun, death, birth, and water all have nothing to do with parlance of Rome. The word we use for the One we worship is no exception.

So let’s take a look at where we get the word for “god”.

Before “god”, says the linguists who study Proto-Germanic (the theoretical, reconstructed root of all modern Germanic languages), we had the word “ghutan,” which was used in the sense of “supreme being.” But that word had an even older root (ghut), which in turn had an even older root: “gheu”. And “gheu” once upon a time meant “to call, to invoke.”

So when our ancestors spoke of god, they meant not merely a spiritual being, but one on whom they called. One with whom they could interact. A relational Person. God was “the one to whom we call.”

I like this—very much.

Because regardless of our personal theologies, we all do this. In the foxholes of our daily lives, we invoke the help of a Being we may say we don’t believe in. How many atheists have been forlorn to hear themselves cry out, “God, please!” in the moment of their personal distress?

It’s as is we cannot help ourselves. Because at some level beneath reason and will, we poke our fingers through our measurable, material surroundings in search of the spiritual we instinctively know to underlie it.

Scientific studies sometimes bump up against this phenomenon. http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/04/04/neurotheology/

One of the scientists quoted in the above article explains at length how the human experience of “god” is an evolutionary adaptation, an almost universal response to the pressures of sentient, rational existence.

But what if it’s the other way around? What if we call upon God because He designed us to call, and because He loves it when we do?

Chasing Tony (From Jubilee, July 2010)

“Can you get a gun?” asked Tony, then 16.
He and two friends had run out of drug money. To get it, they robbed seven convenience stores with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. “We just wanted play money,” remembers Tony.
At the seventh store, the cashier reached for the phone. The boy wielding the shotgun fired, and the clerk went down, a red stain blooming on his flank.
How had it come to this?
When small, Tony was raised by his Catholic grandparents in Chicago, and at the church of a believing aunt, he remembers reciting John 3:16 before the congregation.
But when he turned eight, his father, who lived in Dallas, brought Tony to live there. Tony resented the change—and his father’s battle with alcohol. He started failing school and fighting.
“Every week,” remembers Tony, “I had to bring a note home explaining my bad behavior. . . But it didn’t seem to deter me.”
Tony stole to fund his spiraling drug addiction, and he ran away to avoid the consequences. Whenever he ran, his father patrolled the streets all night in search of him. Tony failed to recognize his father’s love at the time, but now he recognizes that “my father never gave up on me.”
After he was arrested for the convenience store robberies, Tony was released to his father’s custody pending trial. Before long he ran again, hiding from both his father and the police.
On February 1, 1989, Tony was apprehended fleeing from a stolen vehicle. He was certified to stand trial as an adult and sentenced to 25 years.

When Lightning Strikes
By then, whatever faith Tony possessed had dwindled to a faint memory of brimstone and catechisms.
“I was 16 going on 17,” he says, “and I wasn’t going to be nobody’s fool.”
Prison only honed his criminality; after 10 years of incarceration, he lasted four months on his first parole. Tony returned to a hole that no light penetrated—until lightning struck.
Tony’s pregnant Aunt Tina was hit by a lightning bolt. Though she survived, doctors recommended terminating her pregnancy. Tony’s Aunt Margie offered God her life if He spared Tina’s child. When Tina delivered a healthy boy, Margie surrendered her life to Christ.
Margie and her husband, Mark, began to visit Tony. He scoffed at their mention of a caring God, but their own compassion bewildered him.
“Don’t worry about me,” he assured them. “This is my world.”
They wept for the nephew who could imagine no life but prison, but eventually, their perseverance bore fruit.
“God started giving me a soft heart,” says Tony.
He began to pray before parole hearings. When denied, he would give up on God again. But God never gave up on him.
In 2006 Tony reviewed his note card with scripted statements to impress the interviewer at yet another parole hearing. But something made him throw it away; for the first time, he approached God without conditions.
“I’m tired of the games,” he confessed. “If I serve the rest of my term, that’s fine. I want to know the power that’s behind the people who come into prison to visit me. Just help me.”
Tony was shocked when he was offered parole and his choice of reentry programs: nine months of drug rehab or 18 months in the InnerChange Freedom Initiative® (IFI), a reentry program developed by Prison Fellowship and based on the life and teachings of Jesus.
Though tempted by the shorter program, Tony remembered his request of God. Here was his chance to meet the Power behind his aunt. He asked to be sent to IFI.

“God Never Turns His Back.”
“He was just a different person,” marvels Margie, remembering the first time she visited Tony in IFI. On the four-hour drive back home, Margie and Mark wept tears of gratitude.
Tony grew to know God in IFI’s structured, values-centered environment. He also learned to release the pain of his childhood and to understand the consequences of his own choices. And when his business plan won at an IFI business fair, “it amazed me, and it gave me a new viewpoint of my capabilities.”
After his release Tony continued IFI’s post-prison phase. After a difficult job hunt, he finally found employment with Artifex Technology and was promoted to project manager. “I would trust him with anything,” says Artifex owner Jacob Cervantes.
Tony also married Annie Cervantes, a relative of Jacob, and became an instant father to her 11-year-old, Nathan, soon followed by baby Giovanni.
Giovanni’s birth left an awestruck Tony determined to make it on the outside. “Two nights ago,” says the dad, “I was holding Giovanni and the thought crossed my mind if there was a way I could earn some fast money. But he was just looking at me . . . and I realized that my son will look to me as the example.” For his own example, Tony can look to his father, about to celebrate eight years of sobriety. They talk daily.
Tony “understands what life is now,” says his father. Someday Tony wants to use his life to help other ex-prisoners, but for now he serves and loves his family. Despite some transitional struggles, Annie says he’s doing “excellent.”
Day by day, he looks to God for strength because, no matter how far Tony ran in the past, “God never turns His back.”

Raising Up Fathers (from www.prisonfellowship.org)

Raising Up Fathers from the Inside Out


View This IssueOn Father’s Day in America, the tangy smoke of barbecue will float over countless backyards. Young daughters and sons will present their fathers with hugs, homemade cards, and breakfast in bed. But for over one million children of incarcerated men, one thing will be missing: Dad.



The hundreds of thousands of fathers behind bars have an irreplaceable role in the lives of their children, and they need training and practical tools to become better parents. Prison Fellowship has partnered with the National Fatherhood Initiative® (NFI) to develop InsideOut DadTM Christian, a curriculum based on solid biblical principles to help men become the fathers that God created them to be.



And it’s available for your use!





Life Like a Locomotive
Rev. E. Gregory Austen, Jr., director of corrections programming for NFI and primary author of InsideOut Dad Christian, compares the situation of many incarcerated fathers to the biblical character of Samson. “Samson spent most of his life as a man who was unaware—going through life like a locomotive and not fulfilling God’s purposes for him. He couldn’t see clearly until he was in prison and blinded.”



Likewise, says Rev. Austen, men who have made serious mistakes and entered prison have an opportunity to see themselves clearly for the first time, especially in their parental roles. InsideOut Dad Christian is designed to illuminate for men their God-given purpose as fathers and equip them to begin to live it out.





Speaking to the Man
InsideOut Dad Christian “speaks to the man—not at him,” says Raeanne Hance, executive director of Prison Fellowship Florida. Through 12 core sessions, 26 optional sessions, and a reentry module, the curriculum addresses issues central to men, such as: exploring faith, handling and expressing emotions, improving communication, maintaining mental and physical health, and managing stress.



Check It Out for Yourself!
Click here for sample lessons of InsideOut Dad Christian.

Holistically grounded, men will be better able to tackle the fatherhood portion of the curriculum, which helps men to write letters to their children, understand their children’s developmental needs, and reestablish relationships with caregivers.



Each volunteer-led core session comes with optional sessions that expand on important themes. Participants study the curriculum, journal their thoughts, and discuss their findings in breakout sessions. The curriculum also suggests creative ways to interact with their children from afar, such as: “Paper Hugs from Daddy,” chess by mail, and recordings of storybooks. Woven throughout with Scripture, InsideOut Dad Christian is edited for a sixth-grade reading level.



“Volunteers . . . love the curriculum. They love the principles that are being taught,” says Raeanne. She has made InsideOut Dad Christian an integral part of reentry programming at four facilities in Florida and hopes to add a fifth in the near future. She also plans to train inmates to become peer facilitators and lead the program on their own.



The inmates’ “attitudes have changed,” adds Shawn O’Neill, who directs reentry for Prison Fellowship Florida. They have “that eagerness to take that rightful, God-ordained place as father of the family.”





From Sorrow to Hope
When participants were confronted with the importance of godly fatherhood, “their reaction was remorse,” says Bill Anderson, executive director of Prison Fellowship Arizona/Oklahoma, who oversaw promising pilots of the curriculum. But soon participants moved from sorrow to hope as the curriculum offered them practical ways to reach out to their children—and wait patiently for trust to grow back in broken relationships.



Shawn tells the story of one inmate who had a broken relationship with his daughter. Though he had written to her several times before, no answer came. He wrote to her again to share some of the insights he had gained from InsideOut Dad Christian. Soon, she re-opened correspondence with him. By the end of the program, says Shawn, they were “well on their way to reconciliation.”



Robby, an inmate and the father of three boys, wrote to Rev. Austen to say, “I just want to be the father they need in their lives. I truly am blessed to be apart [sic] of a program . . . and I really do appreciate the guidance. It’s only by the grace of God! I plan to apply what I have learned over the last 12 weeks to the best of my ability.”



Not only does fatherhood training help men become better fathers from the inside, but it also helps ex-prisoners stay out. Behind a saving relationship with Christ, claims Rev. Austen, nothing can motivate a man more than the desire to be there for his children. “When they believe that they have an irreplaceable role in the lives of their children,” he says, “it gives them a reason to care.”



Returning mature, well-equipped fathers to their families also helps to break the cycle of intergenerational incarceration. With children of prisoners at significant risk of entering jail, effective fatherhood training can help mitigate some of the worst consequences of separation and betrayed trust.





Implementing the Program
Although it is sometimes inappropriate, and illegal, for inmates to seek contact with children or their caregivers, Austen emphasizes that in the vast majority of cases, reconciliation can reap a harvest of renewed hope for prisoners and their families. Even when caregivers return prisoners’ letters to their children unopened, prisoners are encouraged to save the letters so that one day they might prove to their children that they cared.



InsideOut Dad Christian is published by the National Fatherhood Initiative. You can view samples online. If you would like to bring the curriculum into the prison where you minister, please contact your local Prison Fellowship representative in the field, or call the PF National Program Support Center at 1-800-251-7411.

Dollars and Sense (From Prison Fellowship's Inside Out e-mag)

When Jill Colon came out of prison, she walked into the arms of her Prison Fellowship mentors, Ginger and Esther. They treated her to a picnic lunch in the park before escorting her to a safe transitional housing unit. For a year before Jill’s release, her two mentors had met with her many times to help her prepare for freedom, and they continued to walk with her from the day of her release, gathering donated clothes, finding money to pay for her prescription drugs, and ushering her into a local church.




When Jill Colon (left) got out of prison, she had mentors and resources to help her succeed. Most released prisoners go back inside--crowding prisons and straining budgets.But for many of the 700,000 prisoners released to American neighborhoods each year, the return to society looks bleak. After months or years in an environment prone to eroding decision-making skills, many will take their bus fare and the clothes on their backs and head straight back to familiar territory: addictions, broken relationships, and crime. Nationwide, about half of released prisoners will land back behind bars within three years. Taxpayers will foot the bill for their continued incarceration.





The Big Picture
The alarming recidivism rates of offenders are part of a much larger crisis in American corrections—a crisis that many innovative legislators, corrections officials, and nonprofit partners are working hard to address.



But first, how did we get here?



In the last three decades, many of America’s national and state policy-makers—with broad public support—made sweeping avowals to get “tough on crime.” Harsher sentencing legislation soon followed, such as three strikes laws, mandatory minimums, and the abolishment of parole for certain categories of offense. Meanwhile, tougher penalties for drug use, possession, and distribution helped to keep more people in prison longer.



As a result, by the end of 2008, more than 7.3 million people were incarcerated or under correctional supervision. That’s more than the individual populations of 38 U.S. states, or one in every 31 adults.1 America’s prisons are the fullest in the world.





What Incarceration Costs Us
The cost of corrections has spiraled to roughly $68 billion per year.2 Nationwide, it costs $20,000 to $40,000 per year to incarcerate each of the country’s 2.3 million prisoners, and as the prison population ages, the cost of prisoners’ medical care climbs by 10 percent annually.3



Add to those the hidden costs of high incarceration rates.



When prisoners, especially nonviolent drug offenders, spend decades behind bars, state, local, and federal governments lose out on untold taxable income and workforce productivity.



The incarceration of a parent also adversely affects the family left behind, and minority families are disproportionately represented in their ranks. Seventy percent of children with a parent in prison belong to a racial minority.4 Once a parent is in jail, parent-child contact often fades away. Prisoners’ children—seldom recognized as victims themselves—face an elevated risk of long-term emotional and behavioral disturbances, including academic failure, aggression, and intergenerational incarceration.5



Finally, whenever corrections policy emphasizes punishment over rehabilitation, prisons risk becoming warehouses for inmates. Without access to evidence-based programs to combat addictive behaviors, improve literacy, and impart parenting and vocational skills, released inmates emerge from prisons no better equipped than when they went into them. Prisoners who have not addressed their drug addictions or skills gaps are more likely to commit new crimes upon release, creating new victims and compounding costs for corrections.



Truly dangerous criminals belong in prison. But many offenders could be diverted to alternative corrections without risking public safety, and others could be given tools to make their prison time a truly transformative experience instead of simply a brief hiatus in a life of crime. Because public safety is at stake and public funds are scarce, it is time to examine whether every taxpayer dollar spent on corrections is really making our society more secure, just, and compassionate.





Seeking Solutions
The economic downturn has hit state budgets hard. Combined, states face a projected $375 billion shortfall between FY2010 and FY2011.6 While tightening their belts, states have had to examine their corrections budgets—which previously ballooned 349 percent between 1987 and 20087—and find places to cut spending.



States have first attempted to slash corrections spending in the short term. They have worked to make daily operations less costly by renegotiating the cost of inmate pharmaceuticals, reducing staffing, reducing salaries or benefits, consolidating facilities, and canceling inmate programming.8 Twenty-two states have in some way diminished their corrections capacity by shutting facilities, reducing beds, halting planned expansions, or delaying the opening of new facilities.9 States have also embraced low-risk approaches to reducing inmate populations, such as reducing the number of technical parole violations that result in incarceration and allowing some low-level offenders to serve less than mandatory minimums for satisfactory participation in rehabilitation programming.



Reducing prison populations through innovative release and supervision policies is an important step in controlling corrections costs, but what consequences arise when states must also apply the scalpel to rehabilitative programming?



States like Kansas, Texas, and Colorado, which have in recent years put major dents in their recidivism rates, did so largely by proactively investing in evidence-based pre-release programming. But when the budget crisis hit, Kansas lawmakers slashed funding for community rehabilitation programs—particularly for substance-abuse treatment—that had shown dramatic success. “The money simply doesn’t exist to begin to restore those programs,” laments Bill Miskell, a spokesman for the state corrections department.



While the move has helped shrink Kansas’ corrections budget for the moment, the long-term consequences are already beginning to show. This year one of Kansas’ shuttered prisons will re-open, partially to help house the recidivists, whose numbers, after a promising dip in 2007, are again on the rise.10



So far, Texas has managed to exempt inmate treatment programs from planned budget cuts.11 Colorado has implemented sentencing changes designed to reduce imprisonment rates for low-level drug offenses, raise penalties for more serious offenders, and invest the savings in substance-abuse treatment.





Non-Prison Options
There are also cost-effective approaches outside of prison walls, like community corrections options. According to Dr. Joan Petersilla, community corrections are “non-prison sanctions that are imposed . . . instead of a prison sentence . . . to provide offender accountability, deliver rehabilitations services and surveillance, and achieve fiscal efficiency.” Not only are community corrections approaches generally found to be more effective, particularly for drug-addicted felons, but they can also offer significant savings. An Ohio study in 2002 found that the state saved between $2,000 and $11,000 by appropriately diverting an offender to community corrections instead of prison.



There are also more than 2,000 drug courts in the nation. The original drug court, an intense, community-based program to treat, restore, and supervise drug felons, appeared in the Date County Circuit Court in 1989. Drug courts divert nonviolent substance abusers into treatment. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, research has shown that drug courts “lower arrest and conviction rates, improve substance abuse treatment outcomes, reunite families, and produce measurable cost benefits.”





The Nonprofit Piece
Departments of corrections (DOCs) throughout the nation face difficult decisions. In California the secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations, Matthew Cate, summarizes the situation of many: “The budget reality has forced . . . tough choices as we weigh population reductions, staff layoff, and a significant cut to our rehabilitation programming. We must target our limited resources.”



Like Jill Colon on the day of her release, DOCs have friends eager to help them reach their goals of offender rehabilitation and public safety. Nonprofit organizations, churches, and entire communities can help to fill in the service gaps that the budget crisis has left.



Prison Fellowship is just one organization that works with DOCs in all 50 states to bring change into the lives of prisoners. The InnerChange Freedom Initiative® (IFI), developed by Prison Fellowship, is an intensive, combination in-prison/post-prison reentry program based on the life and teachings of Jesus. Research on one of the IFI programs, now active in five states, showed that its graduates have a much lower rate of return to prison than comparable prisoners. Prison Fellowship is working diligently to incorporate the most effective elements of IFI into programming in other prisons.



IFI and similar programs can complement the aims of Departments of Corrections who may have the will to fight recidivism but lack time, manpower, or resources. Further, faith-based organizations can provide spiritual guidance that helps change prisoners’ lives at the core level of conscience and character.



Beyond assisting with programming, nonprofit ministries can help DOCs create the community-based continuums of care that help ex-prisoners make a successful transition. Prison Fellowship has begun to organize Out4Life coalitions throughout the United States. Out4Life partners—DOCs, prison ministries, churches, community-service organizations, social-service agencies, and volunteers—work together to provide services and resources that help ex-prisoners gain employment, find housing, and reconcile with their families and communities.



The corrections policies of recent decades have taken an enormous toll—both financial and social. While many states have adopted evidence-based policies to reduce prison populations and ensure public safety, the current fiscal crisis imperils both goals. But in this moment of crisis, DOCs and nonprofit partners have a unique opportunity to collaborate in the interest of the law-abiding public, and for the good of prisoners who could safely rejoin the world outside the walls.

Why Mentors Matter (Visit www.pfm.org to learn more)

Why Mentors Matter
Volunteer Dan Pearson on Filling the Father Gap for Ex-Prisoners

Alyson Quinn




Our Current Issue Includes:•Accountability: Helping Others Live Godly Lives

•Why Mentors Matter
•Unmasking Our Real Selves
View This Isssue“On Mother’s Day, there are tears shed at the prison. Father’s Day passes quietly. Most of these guys haven’t had a dad,” explains Dan Pearson, a Prison Fellowship volunteer and a 70-year-old grandfather from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Citing the absence of strong male role models in many prisoners’ pasts, Dan emphasizes the importance that mentors can have for their futures, especially upon release.



“I don’t think you and I can understand the pull of the world on these guys when they get out,” says Dan, “They are like children—giddy.” But after the thrill of freedom come the challenges of reintegration. Ex-prisoners can easily drift back to the places, friends, and habits that led to their incarceration.






Dan and Sondra PearsonThat’s when a mentor can make all the difference. “The recidivism rate is much lower for those who are Christians and have mentors,” Dan insists. Studies have linked involved mentors to significantly reduced rates of return to prison.


Mentors become even more important as states cut corrections budgets. In Michigan, where Dan has led in-prison Bible studies and mentored prisoners since 1996, the state Department of Corrections has decreased its inmate population by 6,500 since 2007, partially by increasing its parole approval rate. As more ex-prisoners reenter neighborhoods, “the answer,” says Dan,“is more mentors.”





“Whoa, I Think I’m a Mentor”
Dan’s path to long-term prisoner mentoring began when he met Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson at a book signing.



When he first encountered the challenge to become involved in prison ministry, “it was love at first sight,” Dan recalls. He entered Prison Fellowship’s Volunteer-in-Prison (VIP) training in the spring of 1996 and soon entered prison for the first time at Deerfield Correctional Facility (ITF), a now-closed minimum-security prison in Ionia, Michigan.



Dan volunteered at Deerfield for 12 ½ years, but only after time, as men continued to call and write to him after their release, did Dan wake up one morning and say to himself, “Whoa, I think I’m a mentor.”



Dan’s mentor role has only increased. He and Sondra, his wife of 48 years, pray for 40 men released from Deerfield. They maintain contact with half of them, monitoring their tenuous progress on the path to a new life.





The Road to Reentry
“I need to find a job,” Dan’s mentees often tell him when they’re about to “ride out.”



“No, you don’t,” Dan responds, “You need to find a good church.”



Dan, a deacon at Heritage Baptist Church in Kentwood, Michigan, tries to first steer ex-offenders toward a healthy Christian fellowship—one that will embrace them and fit their needs—as a foundational step toward successful reentry. Through the church, ex-inmates can usually find jobs and eventually advance their education and careers. “Deacon Dan,” as he’s sometimes known to his mentees, practices what he preaches, introducing ex-prisoners to the pastor at his own church. Some attend services there and have even found employers and new mentors within the congregation.



But growth comes slowly.



A parole officer may call to say that one of Dan’s mentees is on the run. Or the mentees themselves may call with perplexing, or even “goofy,” questions. Dan remembers one ex-prisoner who planned to make a living shining shoes at a shopping center, failing to realize that in the 12 years since his incarceration, shoe-shine boys had become a thing of the past. But if tempted to impatience, Dan reminds himself, “They are asking you for help because they don’t have a dad.”



While he may not have all the answers to their problems, Dan offers his mentees the same vital lifeline any volunteer can offer: a listening ear, encouragement, and his faithful prayers in their behalf.





“We All Need Jesus”
Dan helps “his guys” learn to live and stay on the outside, but the process teaches him as much as it teaches them.



“As a volunteer, I’ve learned patience, understanding, and the importance of keeping myself in the Word. We all need Jesus, prayer, and the Word every day. If any mentor doesn’t stay strong spiritually, he will lose his desire to mentor, and eventually he’ll lose his effectiveness. The prisoners look to their mentor because they see something in them that they desire for their own lives.





“Honey, I’m Your Daddy”
With all his experience, Dan continues to grow as a volunteer. “As long as I’m a volunteer, I’ll keep learning,” he says. Part of his instruction comes from ongoing training through Prison Fellowship.



In 2009 Dan attended a Prison Fellowship conference at Calvin College that helped volunteers connect with other ministries to holistically address the needs of prisoners and their families. There, Dan encountered Forgiven Ministry, Inc., for the first time. On December 4, 2009, Forgiven Ministry and Prison Fellowship volunteers—including Dan—partnered to hold a One Day with God Camp at Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Center in Muskegon, Michigan. The warden and the chaplain selected 20 inmates to invite their children and their caregivers to come and spend a day of structured, spiritually based relationship building and fun with their fathers in the prison gymnasium.



“You can imagine the emotions,” says Dan, recalling the scene. “Thirty kids in that gym going to play with their fathers. But one little five-year-old girl just stood there on the side, watching. The volunteers urged her to go and find her father. But she couldn’t. She had never seen him before. Finally, a prisoner got down on one knee in front of her and said, ‘Honey, I’m your daddy.’”



Scenes like these encourage Dan to continue as a mentor. He’s spurring redeemed ex-prisoners on to rebuild their lives as responsible parents and members of the community, replacing cycles of alienation and despair with connection and hope.