Overwhelmed Understaffed
The three of us volunteers couldn't finish processing the Bible studies today. Eva Jean spent most of the morning opening the mail, Diane worked the computer and I moved Bibles and Bikes. We didn't end up going to lunch until after noon. Most of the letters that come in are simple ones asking for a Bible or to join the study but one letter came in today that had us shaking our heads. I'm going to post some of that letter in his exact words and spelling here just in case someone wants to pray for this man or his celly.
Dear Berean Prison Ministry and Church My name is Albert. I am an African American Christian Man. I am under attack daily by my cell mate James Sanders. The best I can explain his behavor is that Please God, help me to describe Mr. James behavior, Mr. James Sonder is a voiltile Hostile bitter man. He uses Passing Gas constantly as a weapon to harm me and my body.
That wasn't' the only thing Albert was asking for he would also like a one time gift of $50.00 but he promises to pay it back when he is able. On the way to lunch we read the letter to Spark to see what we should do with this request and Spark had the perfect solution. Send his cell mate James a case of Bean-o and a letter to Albert that this is a better solution than money. For some reason I don't think Spark was taking this very seriously.
While searching for something else I ran into this and remembered the letter well. It was the first time we had ever heard of someone using gas as a weapon.
On July 30th, 2013 this was written:
Spark came down to our office to show Diane how to work the new duplicator and all was going well until we ran out of masters. Making copies for the Berean Prison Ministry is a huge job. We send out a set of 50 double sided Bible study lessons to prisons and jails in 48 states in the basic study and have now started an intermediate study. We have over 30,000 prisoners doing the lessons and that grows each week. It is not easy to keep enough studies on hand and when our copier broke almost impossible. One of our volunteers spent her own money, about $150.00 getting a thousand of lesson #1 printed off and a thousand of the letters that explain the study.
On July 30th, 2013 this was written:
Spark came down to our office to show Diane how to work the new duplicator and all was going well until we ran out of masters. Making copies for the Berean Prison Ministry is a huge job. We send out a set of 50 double sided Bible study lessons to prisons and jails in 48 states in the basic study and have now started an intermediate study. We have over 30,000 prisoners doing the lessons and that grows each week. It is not easy to keep enough studies on hand and when our copier broke almost impossible. One of our volunteers spent her own money, about $150.00 getting a thousand of lesson #1 printed off and a thousand of the letters that explain the study.