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Currently about 30 volunteers are serving under the Upper
Susquehanna Valley Council of Yokefellow Prison Ministry.
The
institutions served are:
These volunteers meet with as many as 120 persons weekly. The
primary purpose of these groups is to minister to the emotional,
spiritual and social needs of offenders during and after their
release from incarceration. These group meetings provide an
experience of ‘belonging’ for those who feel they belong to no one.
Every one of us is fundamentally lonely. We need each other’s
support. By meeting regularly, the members soon begin to know and be
known in a profound way. It is here that an inmate can speak freely
about his or her life and what he or she expects to do with it. He
or she can really learn to know himself/herself perhaps for the
first time, and share love and concern for his/her fellow inmates.
A Yokefellow Group is neither a prayer fellowship nor a Bible study
group. Yet members are stimulated as never before to study their
Bible and pray. A basic purpose of the group is to stimulate
individuals to a deeper devotional life, which results in greater
spiritual maturity, a new sense of power and peace and a deeper
level of commitment to the Kingdom of God.
Jeb Magruder of the Watergate affair said, “The Yokefellows, unlike
most people, accept the prisoner as a brother, in fact a wounded
brother in need of special care. None of them made any speeches of
wore any labels, but each time they came, their presence was telling
me that I was a person, someone worthy of Christ’s love and
forgiveness. They didn’t have to tell anyone they were Christians;
in the simple giving of their love and care, they said it all.”
Yokefellow Prison Ministry is active throughout the state of
Pennsylvania. Volunteers go into 49 jails and prisons on a weekly
basis to minister for Christ to prisoners in over 70 groups. The
enrollment of prisoners in the various groups throughout the state
is over 2,000 with an average weekly attendance of over 1,400. |
