Alabama children are encouraged to spread holiday cheer through Julia Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka.
Sunday School classes, missions groups and day cares can use construction paper, cutout 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. “A church doesn’t have a set goal for the number of cards to make. 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.
Prison Fellowship has given out cards for more than 10 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 separated from others.
Cards should be brought or mailed before Thanksgiving to the Birmingham Baptist Association, 750 Montclair Road, Birmingham, AL 35213. For more information, call 205-853-1222.
(TAB)
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