Prisoners' Children Receive Much-Needed Gifts of Love for Christmas
550,000 kids will receive a Christmas present from an incarcerated parent with the help of a yearly Angel Tree ministry outreach to prisoners and their children.
Twelve-year-old Brittany Pokorski and her three siblings this year will spend their first Christmas without their mother who is in prison, but church volunteers and a crew of bikers have descended on Irvine, Texas, to bring their mother’s love in the form of a Christmas present.
“I feel okay because my mom cares about us,” said Brittany, thanking God and the community for their care.
“I feel like it's great and everything because everybody takes time to care about us,” she said. “I want to say thank you, Father. And I'm very glad that he's my savior.”
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Brittany is among two million American children who will spend Christmas this year with a parent in prison. Of that number, 550,000 kids will receive a Christmas present from an incarcerated parent with the help of a yearly Angel Tree ministry outreach to prisoners and their children.
On Saturday, in Irvine, Texas, hundreds of church volunteers and some 100 bikers from the motorcycle ministry Fellowship Riders partnered with Angel Tree to deliver gifts to 450 children in the area.
By every measure, prisoners’ children are the most severely at-risk children and youth in America, according to studies. Children of prisoners are five times more likely to end up in prison themselves, notes U.S. News & World Report. The parental incarceration rate is the single greatest indicator for whether a person will go to prison.
Jeff Means, president of Fellowship Riders, said the outreach is helping to break the pattern of hopelessness by telling the children that someone loves them.
"We feel like we are helping to break this cycle of crime,” he commented.
“In most places, these children we serve are people who are somewhat living beyond the poverty line,” said Means, who saw that the "biggest heroes" are the caregivers, i.e., the grandmothers who are raising the children beyond their own means.
Mark Earley, President of Prison Fellowship Ministries – the parent parachurch organization for Angel Tree – pointed out that Scriptures dictates that there be this kind of ministry in the world.
"Jesus said when you visit a prisoner, you visit me. When you welcome a child, you welcome me," sad Earley, who was the former Virginia attorney-general.
"At Christmas,” he added, “we have an opportunity to become what Jesus was to others; become his hands, his feet and his heart, communicating his love to them."
For the past three years, Earley has given back to some children whose fathers are in prison. He said that in giving to others, he is the one who is blessed: "In the giving, we are actually blessed more than they are," he said.
Perhaps most startling was when 11-year-old Emily Starling-Dickerson – a former inmate's daughter who received a Christmas present last year – decided to give back out of her heart to another inmate's daughter this year. She along with her father, ex-offender William Starling, gave presents to Brittany and her three siblings on Saturday.
"I wanted to give thanks to everyone for doing that [for me in the past],” Emily said, “and let [others] have a Merry Christmas like I'm going to have."
Since 1982, Angel Tree has been an offshoot of the Chuck Colson-founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, which has grown around the country to reach into the nation's prisons and bring prisoners the hope and salvation of Jesus Christ.
