Thank You, Lord, for your faithful calling and supply all these years! Also, Thank You for your love, care and concern for myself as well as all the prisoners and their families we serve through Prison Discipleship!
This Thanksgiving season gives us yet another opportunity to reflect and truly express our heartfelt gratitude and humility for all He has done in this work. With so many men and women coming to Christ and following in discipleship, it is no wonder that the world, the flesh and Satan, are trying to attack at the very heart of our work. So many faithful Saints have stood with us over the years and now are with our Lord receiving their just reward for their Faith and Service! "Thank You, Lord for all these and the blessing of serving with them!"
Let me now take this opportunity to Thank You for your faithful prayer and God guided gifts to this important work. With over 40 years of service with Prison Discipleship and over 50 years of full time ministry, many of you have stood with me for all these years and believed the Lord for His guidance and power working through us, together. Thank you for believing in the work and supporting me!
Just to give an example of the Lord's hand in the ministry, so far this month I have, in my personal outreach, been blessed to see 69 men and women come to a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. I made myself available to the open doors the Lord gave me, shared the Good News of Christ and allowed the Spirit to work! It was God who gave the increase all to His Glory!
With victory many times there comes struggle. Such is our current situation.
With the homegoing of many of our dear Saint team members and others that have retired and saw limits in their incomes develop, we have found ourselves with a continued short fall in the needed funds to meet our budget. Only a very special series of gifts have kept our doors open and ministering! Thanks be to the Lord for these blessed Saints! Pray this end of the year will bring special God sent gifts to catch us up and new commitments to develop the ministry for the next year. As always, Thank you for your prayers, which God is answering, and your willingness to join with me to reach into the prisons and jails!
In His love for the prisoners,
Dr. C. Steve Bradshaw
President/Leader
PEACE TO ALL FROM THE NEW "Federal Certified Prison Education Services/Project HUB Team!"
And as they say, "Here is the rest of the story. Five young Amish girls shot and killed, five shot and wounded, some critically. The families of the girls who were shot immediately forgave Charles for this horrific deed he had just committed.
This attacker had preyed on the most innocent and defenseless members of a determinedly religious community. Even so, there are effects that linger and details of the event that have never been well understood.
Everyone is doing well, for the best part, but we still wonder: why did it happen?
Forgiveness is not a once in done thing, it's a lifelong process.
As a principle, forgiveness is closely adhered to by the Amish, but it takes a while for each person's emotions to catch up with such an outward decision.
When the families and community saw the wounded girls fighting for their lives in the hospital, they were angry. "That's when it hit" As a family and a community they felt helpless."
But the families all agreed it was "a huge relief" that Roberts did not go through with his planned sexual assaults. If Roberts had lived, the community would have wanted justice served- though not the death penalty.
The decision to forgive the killer would have been collective and about giving up the right to revenge and gruage. The essence of Amish life is about giving up, giving up oneself to the group, to God. Also, from how one dresses, to the kind of work one does that is shaped by rituals of self-surrender. Amish life is shaped by rituals of self-surrender. The Amish did not want to be thought of as saintly nor as stoically suffering.
The Amish believe that harboring anger and resentment is corrosive, it will eat you up. Forgiveness is so ingrained in their heritage that it's part of their character. Many, on that day, had to deal with the news that one of their daughters was dead or wounded. And yet, they chose to forgive, but you see, it's a journey. They still made that immediate choice in principle, but it took a few years until they could feel that they really meant it inside to forgive Charlie.
How do you think of forgiveness? I personally must forgive; this keeps me in sync with what God has taught me. Sometimes I must repeat it a lot, but at least God knows I'm working on it. Sometimes, life is not just a bowl of cherries!
Sincerely,
Ivy S. Kirk