ID Prison Ministry - December Newsletter

Christmas Greetings!

It's not long now until we celebrate our Saviour's birth.
We thank God for his great love to us all, in Jesus - and the awesome gospel message that we get to share with others.

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. - Isaiah 9:6

We hope you might find time this Christmas to reflect in wonder at our wonderful and mighty Saviour, Jesus Christ.
We wish you all a peaceful and joyful Christmas, and a blessed New Year!

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Imago Dei Prison Ministry is a year old on 1 January and we have had a blessed and amazing first year. God is to be praised, and given all the glory as we look back and see all that has been accomplished over these last 12 months. God has opened new doors, closed some doors, and shown the way forward for various different opportunities; lives have been transformed, and ladies have been equipped and empowered and given hope for the future.

At our recent trustees meeting Tracy shared with the trustees that at the beginning of this last year she was challenged to make a list of prayer requests; to dream big for the ministry, and to see what God did as we trusted Him.
Looking back at the list at almost the end of our first year, God has answered and brought about all but two of those requests/dreams and the remaining two are in the pipeline.

God is so good, and so faithful, and we are very encouraged and thankful to Him.

NEWS & PRAYER REQUESTS

Over the past 6 weeks we have been watching 'When Faith Gets Shaken' DVD and having some great discussions afterwards at our Lunchtime Bible Studies.
It is a real privilege to be able to get together and have some good honest discussions and share some really encouraging times with the group of Christian ladies that have been attending regularly.

Please pray for the Christians in prisons that their faith will grow and that they will be real witnesses for the Lord to their peers and also to the officers.

We are very thankful to all our ID Breakthrough Partners who have contributed financially to the work of ID Prison Ministry this year. Your support is much appreciated and allows us to help others in many ways.
Thank you!!

If you would like to contribute to the ongoing work, please click below or visit our website.

As part of our 'Free To Be' programme we offer various different courses that help to address some of the issues that may have led to offending behaviour. Oftentimes, these haven't been dealt with before and so it is a good opportunity to equip and give the tools for better coping strategies.

Praise God that this year we have run:

3 Forgiveness courses
9 Shine courses
5 Living With Loss courses
11 Victim Awareness courses.

We are grateful to all those that have been part of the ID Team this year. We are not all able to go 'inside' and deliver the work but there are many people that make the 'inside' work possible.

In addition to Sarah and Chloe delivering the courses, we have Sally, Tina & Wendy, our Trustees, and Maggie, Russell and John who have helped with various bits of admin.
We are also grateful to Pam & Christine who have agreed to help us fundraise in the new year.

Thank you all!!

Over the last few months we have been involved in writing a Parenting Course as a response to one of the prisons seeing a need amongst the ladies. We will be delivering the first one in January, and have 12 ladies scheduled to take part over an 8 week period.

Please pray it will go well and be another way of empowering and equipping many mums ready for new beginnings upon release.

Pray for all those that are separated from their children this Christmastime.

In this last year we have been producing our newsletter quarterly. Due to feedback we have received, we have decided to increase this to a monthly newsletter in the new year.

Our website is updated regularly and so you can always check out our News page for more up-to-date news.

In addition, we will continue to produce our fortnightly prayer letter giving more specific requests for prayer. If you've not yet signed up for this please do so by clicking here.