Children minister to inmates through Christmas cards

Alabama children are invited once again to spread holiday cheer through Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka.
Sunday School classes, missions groups and day cares can use construction paper, cut-out pictures and original drawings with personal messages to create handmade Christmas cards for prison inmates. Envelopes for the cards are not needed.
   
“Women’s groups don’t mind giving their beautiful cards for the children to cut out and paste on their own cards,” said Mary Posey Thomas, a Birmingham-area Prison Fellowship leader. Thomas has already received a box of handmade cards from Canaan Baptist Church in Bessemer, she said, noting the time spent on the cards is what is special.
   
“A church doesn’t have to set a goal for the number of cards to make,” Thomas said. “If each child makes one that is really special, that’s great.”
   
Thomas reads through all the cards before they go out. Then Prison Fellowship volunteers hand deliver a card to each of the inmates at Tutwiler the first week of December.
   
“I have glitter all over my desk after reading them,” she said. “And they have the sweetest messages.
   
“One boy wrote, ‘Please don’t cry. You gonna get out,’” Thomas said, “and a girl one year wrote, ‘You think everyone has forgotten you, but I haven’t, and God hasn’t,’ and then she shared how the inmate could become a Christian.”
   
Prison Fellowship has given out cards for eight years thanks to permission by the warden and chaplain of the prison and thanks to the response of the children’s efforts.
   
“We like for the children to include their first names and their ages, but not to put their addresses or phone numbers,” Thomas said.
   
Prison Fellowship delivers 1,000 cards to Tutwiler inmates, including those on death row and those in segregation, and then takes the extras to Women’s Work Release at the county jail.
   
Any leftover cards are delivered to some of the men prisoners if they are not addressed to women.
   
“When we deliver them, we tell them that the children of Alabama are praying for them and wish them a merry Christmas,” Thomas said.
   
Cards should be brought or mailed before Thanksgiving to the Birmingham Baptist Association, 2501 12th Ave. N., Birmingham, AL 35234. 
   
Call Thomas at 205-853-1222 for more information about the cards.