Winter 2007
Rocio Robles
Co-Director, FSC
Most of us at Tierra Nueva try to write to criminals, especially those in correction centers.
Some in the county jail must fulfill long sentences, and they often relocate to different jails, sometimes far from friends and relatives. When they are very isolated, they have a greater need to communicate with people they know, who understand how difficult isolation is. Our ministry never denies a call from the jail, which is always very expensive, although most of the inmates usually write to us.
One of those prisoners, known by Bob, began to write to me. His name is Juan, and he and I have constantly written since 2004. At McNeil Island Prison, he knew a young man named Jose that nobody wrote to, and he gave Tierra Nueva’s address to him.
Jose began to write to me with much timidity, giving multiple excuses and saying not to answer him. In the second letter, he told me he was from Honduras. I was excited and told him about our ministry in Minas de Oro, Honduras, and about the Hondurans that live in Skagit County, mentioning some names.
In the following letter, he thanked God over and over for having found Tierra Nueva, because he was born in Minas de Oro, Honduras, and recognized some of the names I had mentioned. In short, we found out that he was related to people living in this county. For almost five years, he had not been able to communicate with his mother. He had been consumed by anguish, knowing that his mother had perhaps given him up for dead. Now he feels much calmer to know that through our ministry in Honduras, he has found a way to let his mother know where he is and why he hasn’t communicated with her.
These small daily miracles are the force of our ministry—to be witnesses of how the hand of God extends to reach the good one, the bad one, the humble one, the needy one.
