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 In 1998 Tom and Tricia Irwin of Hempstead, Texas, noticed a table sign at their church seeking volunteers for Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program.
They signed up, took tags for two children from one family, and purchased the suggested gifts. On a Saturday just before Christmas, they delivered the gifts to the home, gratified by touching the lives of two little boys.
Later, Tom wrote a short note to the children’s father, Richard, who was serving time in a federal prison in Tennessee. To his surprise, he received a response. As the months passed, Tom and Richard exchanged many letters, though the inmate struggled with his writing skills. Tom learned that Richard had grown up in the Hempstead area and had become a major drug dealer. Even though he was now serving 25 years in prison, Richard believed God had turned around a bad situation for His good purpose—to bring Richard to Christ. He became a Christian five months after arriving in prison. In every letter to Tom, he was full of praise for his Savior, Jesus.
After a year and a half of letters, Richard wrote that he was being transferred to a minimum-security facility at Beaumont, about an hour from Houston. He asked if Tom would visit him.
Tom knew nothing about prisons or prisoners and was apprehensive. But he agreed to visit Richard. Waiting in the visiting room, Tom wondered if the attitude of the real person would match the encouraging words of his letters. And then Richard appeared, a smile on his face and obvious peace in his heart. "As we talked I could see how Jesus had changed his life," Tom observed.
"Here was a man who could barely write a simple sentence, and I remembered how the Jewish leaders had marveled at Peter and John as uneducated and untrained men who had ‘been with Jesus.’ Richard—who had had some bad breaks in life and made some bad choices—was someone who had ‘been with Jesus.’ And where I had gone to bless him, he was now blessing me!" |
