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Susan is a sister in Christ who is serving time in a state prison in Texas.

She shares, “I used to dream about getting paroled— what I would eat first and finally getting a good night’s sleep. Now I dream of finally hearing the Divine Liturgy, experiencing the Mystery of the Eucharist…I pray for my Baptism and Chrismation.”

Susan faced a serious reality check when she came to prison. She wondered
what had been missing in her life that brought her there and she began
searching for deeper meaning and truth.

“Through the nightmare of coming to prison I held firm to my faith. There are many believers here, but prison is not God’s house; it’s His battlefield. Every day I cried out in hopelessness and despair. I did not yet know how to pray but God was guiding me,” Susan wrote.

Susan saw emptiness in Protestant ministry programs and was desperate
to find her path. She learned Biblical Greek in order to study the original New Testament text. While she could now read the scriptures in two languages, she realized she still needed help understanding them.

“I remember well the prayers to the Lord, in need of someone to help guide me. God loved me enough to answer my prayers by sending me the Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry. They helped unfold the layers of the true and ancient Faith. In doing so, they unfolded all the hurt and broken layers of my spirit in order for me to truly be healed by God.”

“This journey gave me the confidence and faith in myself to go back to college; I will graduate and be a certified Paralegal this year, a career I plan to pursue when I make parole, if that is where God leads me.”

As an agency of the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops, we put into action Christ’s commandment to ‘visit Him’ in prison (Matthew 25:36) through the direct support of individuals like you.

We ask that you please keep people such as Susan in your prayers. Life-transforming events like this occur every day as Christ is always there for those souls incarcerated in the darkness of prisons and jails.

The post Susan’s Story- How OCPM Transforms Lives appeared first on Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry.