letters from the jail

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.

God's love catching the attention of inmates

Winter 2007
Chris Hoke, Assistant Jail Chaplain

Men in jail have heard a lot of talk. Legal talk. Street talk. Religious talk.

One of the valley's top meth cooks told me two nights ago that he used to have zero interest in the Bible because "all those miracles" never seemed to happen to anybody.

But now he can't wait to be prayed for—since he's experienced God's presence in startling ways both in his trailer and in jail. He's seen many of the people he knows healed of swollen livers, back pain, knee problems and depression almost instantly in our Bible studies in recent months. He's especially attracted to Jesus now because what he's witnessing and experiencing himself seems to line up with the stories and message he's heard at Bob's Bible studies for years: that Jesus approaches, heals, and calls people that most often are not looking for him and have no stated faith at all prior to the encounter.

A young Latino gang leader I've been meeting with has similarly come from a place of neither faith nor knowledge of Jesus to astonishment and eagerness to hear more. Initially he was unable to imagine my paraphrases (he never learned to read) of the gospel accounts of Jesus' displays of nonviolent power, fearlessness, love, care of enemies, and authority amidst violence ever working in his gang. Now he gets updates about how this very love—this deeper way of "being down" for friends—is infiltrating and surprising his posse on the outside, many of whom I've gotten to know over the last year.

Their latenight phone calls are increasing, inviting me to their hidden backroom meetings, as well as calling in distress and arriving stained by blood, wanting prayer and praying for each other on my living room floor as both enemies and squad cars hunt them through the night. My faith and the faith of inmates—as well as an eagerness to join the risky discipleship of Jesus' adventure among “sinners”—swells when the Presence and reality of who God is confirms the Bible's past record in our own unsuspecting stories.

US citizen detained by immigration

Winter 2007
Roger Capron
Co-Director of the Family Support Center

Who do we advocate for—the principality (in this case, the government)? Or the person?

Adriana called me last Thursday. Her young spouse, James, had been taken by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the former Border Patrol) to the NW Detention Center in Tacoma. Adriana insisted that James was a US Citizen, born inCalifornia. She told me how the ICE officials didn’t believe him and had put him in removal proceedings.

My advocacy mode kicked in, and I began to ask more questions: Where exactly was James born? When? Do you have an original birth certificate? Any other identification? I told Adriana to ask for specific information when James called from the Detention Center. Next, I called the NW Detention Center and asked them to investigate our claim that James is a citizen. The
investigation results came the next day when James told his wife that ICE had reviewed his birth certificate and said he’d better get a lawyer. Adriana insisted that he was born in the USA,
thus making him a citizen.

Sometimes I wonder why I pass through a stage in advocacy when I trust more in American institutions than in the individual; or why I have tended to believe so blindly the individual under the influence of his or her allegiance to their office and position. Such was my weakness after hearing this news. Wondering why someone would go to the pains of making up a story about their citizenship, I reluctantly called an attorney friend of mine in Seattle to ask for advice. He expressed the same doubt about James’s story, but suggested that if it were true, it would best be handled by our US Congressman’s Office in Bellingham.

I didn’t expect to get very far with a congressperson on a case that didn’t sound too credible, but to my complete surprise, I was met with an enthusiastic desire to check into the validity of James’s situation. So, after more phone calls and a visit to the congressman’s office to let them take copies of James’s birth certificate and other identifying documents, we waited for the outcome. Two days ago James called to ask that someone come to Tacoma to pick him up! ICE had let him go and then backpedaled, claiming James never told them he was a citizen.

asthma healed!

Winter 2007
Emily Martin

We’re used to the teaching that when you break the rules, here are the consequences. For example, in my house we had rules, and if I broke the rules, I knew for how long I would be grounded. That’s how most people are raised.

Last year when I was in Mexico, I suffered with asthma really bad because of all the pollution in the air. When I came home, I was really sick with asthma all through the winter. I came to Tierra Nueva and saw people being healed, but I didn’t ask God to heal my asthma, because I got asthma from smoking marijuana for so many years—I thought it was my punishment from God. I smoked weed for all those years, and so now I thought I had to live with asthma, because that was just the obvious consequence.

I never felt I could ask God to heal my asthma, because obviously it was a punishment for having done something I knew was wrong.

Then one Sunday at the Tierra Nueva worship service, Bob was telling stories about guys in the jail who had gotten in fights and broken their hands, and God healed their hands anyway. So I thought I would ask God to heal my asthma. That Sunday, there were so many people in the service who needed prayer for healing that Bob said we should all put our hand on whatever part of our body needed healing, and he would lead us in a prayer. I put my hand on my chest, and we prayed as a group.

Later, I realized that I could go outside in the cold air and still breathe. I played soccer at night with some of the guys from Tierra Nueva, and I was fine. Then I went to Oaxaca over the summer where the air pollution is really bad—protesters were burning busses and tires—but I was fine. When we went to Mexico City, the air pollution turned my eyes red, but I didn’t cough hardly at all.

Now I don’t have asthma. I learned that there are consequences, but that’s not the same thing as punishment, because God’s not about punishment.

saved from suicide

Spring 2006
Rocio Robles, Co-Director, Family Support Center

Mario came to the Skagit Valley just for a visit, with a big pain in his heart because he had lost his family. Despairing because the woman he loved had betrayed him for another man, he later learned that it was all because of his alcoholism. So many times he told me his drinking history, crying like a child, telling how he wanted to kill his wife and then take his own life, and how he thought of his children that would be left as orphans.

He decided to go to the orchard and shoot two times in his chest, but the pistol didn’t discharge. He struck against tree trunks, his blood joining his tears of desperation.

All of us at Tierra Nueva have benefitted from the friendship with Mario. We’ve seen how God has placed his eyes upon him and changed him so much. He has more than a year of not trying even one beer, when before he drank on a daily basis. In spite of his vice, he was always working. In the morning, he weeded gardens, and in the afternoon he worked in a resturant. For months, I drove him to and from work because he didn’t want to drive at 1:00 am for fear the police would detain him. Finally he decided to work in a nursery.

When someone called to donate a pickup, Roger and I immediately thought of Mario. Now it’s much easier for him to transport his second hand pruning equipment, and he has a much easier time hauling off yard waste. Mario has always said that Tierra Nueva is his family. For us, it is a living miracle and a big motivator in our effort to humbly serve others.

recruited by Jesus!

Spring 2006
Chris Hoke, Assistant Jail Chaplain

For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.
Matt 9:13

Why did Jesus hang out with and call sinners to follow him? I’m increasingly convinced that they were the people best suited for his mission.

Reading the gospels with dozens of inmates—especially first generation Latino street gang members—I ask the men, “If you were Jesus, what kind of people would you want to follow you?”

These are individuals who can operate outside the religious establishment, ready to lose family and all possessions for the sake of one thing. Many have already laid their lives on the line for a member of their gang. Most have few reservations in coming alongside the ill-repute in the community and getting arrested by the authorities. They often have stories of others plotting to kill them.

I’ve been involved with a network of the youngest, most notorious Chicano Sureños, and have been challenged when reading Jesus’ call in Luke 6: If you only show love and respect to members of your own, what makes you any different? Even Norteños and cops do that.

Though guards shake their heads at the names of men I request to meet, a number of these 18-22 year olds tell me how they are praying for each other inside and outside the jail. Two nights ago, a 19-year-old felon who goes by “Travieso” —Spanish for “Naughty”—was eager to tell me that he’d prayed for his prosecutor last week... who just that day had suddenly decided not to press half of his charges.

Covered in tattoos and smiles, these are the ones the Father chooses to adopt, who Jesus chooses to follow him

my trip to TN Honduras

Spring 2006 Nick Bryant

This winter, Nick visited and worked with the Tierra Nueva community in Honduras. For more information about the Honduras arm of TN, visit our website, www.tierra-nueva.org.

“Así es, Nicolas. Hay que sufrir.” He said it so nonchalantly, like a flat and unsatisfying period to punctuate so many problems and pain. You have to suffer.

As he stooped to heft one more brimming bag of beans to his shoulder, I couldn’t help but wonder where God was in the midst of this. Does the kingdom of God look like a gradual alleviation of poverty through the patient and persistent efforts of nine Tierra Nueva promoters, who share the good news of improved farming methods, natural medicine, and nutrition among the extremely poor? Is it the filling of church pews or the political empowerment of peasant campesinos?

“Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”

“But Jesus,” I want to say, “you can heal this man’s back bent by too many heavy loads; you can even invite him out of the shame and condemnation that he believes he somehow merits.

But what are you going to do about his poverty, about third world debt and corrupt governments, about CAFTA and immigration legislation and the oppressive structures and institutions that caused these infirmities in the first place?”

Returning with more questions than answers, I’m beginning to see that our liberation is realized in both exodus and crucifixion: it is a salvation from the oppressive reality in which we find ourselves. And it is an invitation to live and die in such a way as to demonstrate that these earthly structures have no power over us. It is in this tension between the spiritual and the material that I pray with our Honduran brothers and sisters, “Kingdom of God, come!”