Mikel and Jesus

Mikel has a lazy eye. 

He talks almost exclusively in broken urban slang. I would bet that he doesn’t weigh more than 135 pounds, despite the fact that he’s 17. 

When he first joined our horticulture class I feared for his safety. He was an easy target to pick on between the lazy eye, small stature, and wannabe gangster vernacular. Not to mention that I quickly discerned that he was probably developmentally disabled. 

But the kid tried so hard in class. He didn’t blink twice at the rude comments and snickering directed towards him. On our final exam, the students were supposed to design a landscape for a residence - Mikel drew the inside of a dojo instead. The kid just loves karate apparently. There wasn’t a single plant to be found in his design. 

The other students graded his design and unsurprisingly, he failed. I couldn’t change his grade, so I gave him another assignment to help boost his grade. Our little secret. 

At our graduation ceremony, I spoke of how Jesus was once a prisoner. The most powerful man to ever walk Earth, a man that quite literally raised people from the dead, willingly chose to allow himself to be imprisoned. For us. He was the prisoner. He died alongside two common criminals. Jesus understands them and their situation better than anyone else. 

Mikel handed me a note recently. I thought it would be another request for books. He loves Percy Jackson. 

His grammar and spelling are those of an elementary student. I’ve corrected the spelling and added quotation marks, but I have not rearranged his words. 

Here’s what he wrote: 

I ask Jesus, “What does it mean to be saved?” Jesus said, “If you confess with your mouth that I am Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised me from the dead you will be saved.” 

I ask Him, “Does God know me?” He said, “Before I formed you in the belly I knew you.” I said, “So God is the father of the living, not the dead?” He said, “Yes indeed, I am the father of the living, not the dead.”

I ask Him a big question, “What did you say to the world when you crucified your son on the cross?”

He said, “I so loved the world that I gave my one and only son so whoever believed in me shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

I ask Him, “Do you have to love your enemies?” He said, “Yes, you have to love your enemies as you love yourself.”

So many kids we work with like Mikel never had a chance. There’s no telling what horrible home life they came from, what horrors they’ve seen or heard. 

They’re malnourished, underdeveloped, undereducated, and often mentally disabled. There’s no possible way for them to understand what’s happening in a courtroom, and without an adequate defense, they end up incarcerated with lengthy sentences. 

In prison they receive a rudimentary education and three subpar meals a day. Their days are spent playing cards and watching TV. Prison is no place for a child to grow up. 

HeartBound is never going to fully fix the prison system. We’re never going to convince families to stay together and raise children in stable, healthy households so their kids avoid prison in the first place. We’re never going to make dramatic changes to our education system so disabled kids like Mikel don’t slip through the cracks. 

And that’s okay. That’s not our mission. 

We are there to love the prisoner - unconditionally. Regardless of their past or their crime. We’re there to help mentor and teach them, to help them grow in their faith, to know they are loved. 

Our prayer is that if they were up on the cross next to Jesus, they’d be like the condemned thief who repented and met Jesus in eternal paradise. 

I’m going to Heaven one day. There, I’ll see Mikel and Jesus standing side by side. 

Our society would view a kid like Mikel as our enemy. He’s committed a crime, hurt someone, broke the rules. Yet, as Mikel writes, we must love him, nonetheless. In doing so, we have done it unto Christ.

I end this newsletter to ask for your financial support. The early parts of each year are traditionally not a time when people give to charity. Let’s break that trend. Please consider giving to our ministry to support our programming and those like Mikel. And please pray for our prison system. The situation is dire.

We have several major events coming up - Returning Hearts, our Women’s Seminary graduation, and four graduation ceremonies for horticulture. Collectively, these events will cost us nearly $15,000. Additionally, we’re expanding our Little Readers program to every Mississippi state prison in March. On top of that, we’re hiring a formerly incarcerated woman to help grow our ministry as a part-time Development Coordinator. Each of these developments is going to require your support - whether $10, $100, or $10,000. Any gift helps. Eighty-five percent of every dollar that is given to this ministry goes directly to programming for people like Mikel. 

Please consider supporting us, and God bless you, friends.