Pen Pal
November 7th, 2011 by adminHere’s the second in our series of personal reflections shared during our Prison Ministry Social Justice Sunday service
My friend Heidi was very active in prison ministry at the church we had recently joined. She said she had too many people to correspond with and asked me if I would like to write to one of her friends. I agreed, and started a correspondence with a person in prison in Arizona.
This man and I corresponded for more than a year. I would write to him and would get a letter back immediately, always putting me in the position of feeling I was behind in my correspondence. I remember receiving from him an Easter card and a Thanksgiving card—the only two I ever got. I knew he had robbed a bank with his brother who was also in the prison. He had written that after robbing the bank, something happened but he couldn’t remember what.
Basically, he said his life was extremely boring and he really wanted to know all about my life. I was going to seminary at the time so I wrote about my studies and my family. He always wrote back with positive comments about what I was doing.
I had not heard from him in about two months and was driving in my car listening to a newscast. An item came on that a man in Arizona had been executed and the German government was protesting because the victim held dual citizenship with the US and Germany. It was my pen pal! I pulled over and started shaking and crying. I did not know he had been facing death. Never has the death penalty seemed more senseless and cruel and wasteful.
Barbara Brecht