For most of us, Christmas means a time spent commemorating Christ’s birth as we give presents, eat food together and spend time with family. Others around the world, especially those in prison, are not as fortunate.
Crossroad Bible Institute has eighteen satellite campuses around the world, and we asked a few of them how they planned to celebrate Christmas in the prisons this year. Their answers remind us to be grateful, at Christmastime and throughout the year, for everything God has blessed us with. We can also rejoice that God is bringing good news and glad tidings to His people everywhere.
Lahai Kargbo of CBI Sierra Leone:
Every Christmas season, CBI Sierra Leone organizes a Christmas outreach event for children in Sierra Leone’s juvenile prisons. We come together and serve a common goal: to demonstrate the love of Christ by helping to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of juveniles in prison. The practical way we share the love of Christ is through providing food, clothes, slippers, Christmas gifts and any other permissible item that we are able to obtain for children in prisons in the Freetown area.
David Kwadwo Ofosuhene of CBI Ghana:
Every Christmas, for the past years, CBI Ghana students in the two major facilities where we offer CBI materials are presented with food items in the form of rice and cooking oil, soap and clothing in the form of t-shirts.
This year, students will receive a quantity of rice, cooking oil, fish in a tin and soap.
Our students will also participate in an annual Christmas singing event on December 19 at the Medium Security Prison, currently the second largest prison facility in Ghana. Additionally, we are presenting CBI students with certificates on December 20 for completing their Bible study lessons.
Anne Bruinsma of CBI Australia and the South Pacific:
It is all so exciting to celebrate the Lord’s birth and to be able to bring and share the glad and happy tidings with the student inmates and with our ever-faithful Instructors. We are sending out a special Christmas card from the office staff to all of our Instructors and students.
Once again this year, as in previous years, we at CBI Australia are looking after the Angel Tree for the children of prisoners in Fiji. Prison Fellowship in Fiji collects the presents for this lovely venture. Last year there was a wonderful response and many presents were collected during December and sent for the children of prisoners in Fiji. The director of Prison Fellowship in Fiji received them in excellent condition. He and his team of twelve men visit the prisons there to distribute the gifts.
When a father or mother is in jail, the children are the ones who suffer. So it is wonderful to have Christmastime opportunities like this to give these little ones some of what we have received in Jesus Christ. The Angel Tree gift is often the only present they receive. Can you imagine their happy, smiling faces?