Dear Diane, Juan, Marcus, Joe and all the members of the San Quentin team;
You are all truly a God sent. What a blessing it was to receive your letter and
information about your project. I have been incarcerated for 21 years, and it is so
important to share the stories of what truly goes on behind the walls, and I have found
healing in being able to share with the outside world exactly what we as inmates are
subjected to on a daily basis.
In reading your personal story / profiles, my favorite one was from Isaac(56) who shared
how he did not know enough about Jesus. I was drawn in immediately, because I
cannot share my story and my testimony without thanking God for his son dying for me,
and anyone else who believes, so that our future is still bright and filled with hope 🙂 I
never could have made it through the last 21 years if it was not for my Lord and Savior,
and the best friend anyone could ever ask for.
I grew up in a Seventh-Day adventist church and attended Seventh-Day Adventist
school into college. Prison was never on my radar or a place that I would spend a life
without parole sentence as (far as “man” says). I did stray so far away from God and
completely silenced the voice of the Holy Spirit in my life, and made choices that I did
not believe I was capable of making and I now find myself 21 years later in the only
women’s prison in Nevada.
God has my attention and I realize “Inside” or “outside” I have a job to do, and that is to
share the love of Jesus with everyone that I meet, and I have the gift of encouragement
and letting others know that there is nothing that you or I can do that will make Jesus fall
out of love with us. Same people believe that they have done too much and family has
walked away, and God must have given up on them by this point, and that is where God
receives the glory when I say that is just not true…. Let me tell you my story and
testimony. By the time I’m done, and tears and running down their face, they say “if
God can do it for you, then He can do it for me.”
There are so many of us that have done a good about of time, and its so important to
always remember where God picked us up at and even though many years have gone
by and we look like we have it together and we are all cleaned up, it’s detrimental to
never forget our condition at one point and extend a hand to someone who is behind us
on the same journey and encourage them and be “real” and say “we are more alike than
you think”. There is healing in knowing that we are not the only ones who have ever
done something we never imagined we could or would do.
Prison is not the end. It’s actually the place where I was set free.
Thank You Jesus.
I’m enclosing a photo or two. I was very happy to hear you will return photos after
copying them. I pray this is helpful to share out and anything that I can be helpful with,
please do not hesitate to ask.
Thank you so much
Sincerely,
Erin