As Monty Lewis lay naked in solitary confinement, voices in his head told him, "You're no good. You'll never be any good. You might as well end it all now."
Many inmates experience this kind of despair, never expecting their life can change for the better, even when they get out of prison.
For many convicts a sense of hopelessness began at an early age. Often they are told they are useless or dirty. "I had believed a lie," comments Lewis, "I believed that I was no good. I believed what I was told. And if you can't believe your dad, then who can you believe?"
Lewis was born in 1945 in a small mining town in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Growing up, his father often beat his mother. Lewis' first taste of alcohol, at the age of four and half, started him down a destructive path. As he grew older, he chose harder and harder drugs to try to cover the pain from all kinds of abuse.
"I remember one day in Vancouver ... coming out of the Hudson's Bay store stealing leather jackets to sell for the price of a cap of heroin," says Lewis, "And I thought, 'How in the world did I get to be this kind of person?'"
After a number of drug and violence related offenses in Ontario, the RCMP tracked him down and threw him in solitary confinement at the London Detention Centre in Ontario.
"And then that little man from the Salvation Army came," Lewis remembers. That "little man" was Brigadier Greenwood. He shared the source of hope for a better life, whether it be behind bars or out in the public.
"Jesus loves you and wants to forgive you for every sin you have ever committed," said Greenwood.
It was something Lewis had never heard before.
Greenwood offered to pray with him and Lewis reached through the bars to take his hands.
"Here I was, a man, naked, with tears running down my face, in front of a Salvation Army officer I didn't even know and a couple of Corrections officers there guarding me," recalls Lewis.
Something extraordinary happened in that small room as Lewis asked Jesus to forgive him of his sins. "That day Jesus Christ became real to me, and His love filled the cell, filled my life," says Lewis.
"I've never had to put a drug in my arm since."
Corrections Canada views visitation ministries by groups such as the Salvation Army and the in-house work of chaplains as crucial to the inmate population, says Gary Sears, media liaison with Edmonton Institution.
Like Lewis, Mark Colley also found hope in Jesus Christ while serving time behind bars.
Born in a small town near Halifax and raised by his grandparents, Colley started partying and petty thieving as a youngster.
During the time Colley lived in Edmonton (1979-82) he fell asleep while driving to work, the result of spending the previous night getting high. "Wrote off my car," says Colley, yet, he adds, "I walked away."
When he began serving a 21 month sentence in the Edmonton Institution, his cellmate handed him a Bible. "You're a sinner and you need Christ in your life," the man boldly declared. Colley says he'd been called many things, but never a "sinner."
Something about his cellmate's life intrigued him, so Colley started attending Bible studies in the prison. After three months, Colley says, "I was convinced that the Bible was the Word of God and Jesus was who He said He was. And I accepted Him as my Saviour."
"The lights came on in my life," says Colley about inviting Jesus into his life. "They came on and I began to change. I saw that what I was doing was wrong."
Colley immediately phoned his girlfriend and as her pimp told her to stop working the streets. "She thought I went crazy," he says.
Richard Sanders had a similar reaction when he phoned his girlfriend Kathy from jail after accepting Christ as his personal Saviour. "She thought I was high," he says.
Born in Camrose, Alberta, Sanders says both of his parents were alcoholics. When he was six his family moved to Edmonton.
Sanders began stealing things at an early age, initially for the rush. "Anytime something wasn't bolted down," he says, "I was taking it."
By age 12 he was smoking pot and drinking. The following year he met Kathy, who would later become his wife.
After his dad moved out, Sanders, at age 15, became the breadwinner in the house. He says he would break into stores to steal cigarettes. Later, he and Kathy's older brother broke into commercial high-rises to find cash-boxes. Eventually they were arrested and Sanders spent eight months at the Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Centre.
When Richard got out he and Kathy moved into an apartment together. Few people in their families knew that Kathy was working the streets and Richard was dealing drugs. For 10 years their lives continued this way. Even parenthood, when both were 16, failed to curb their destructive lifestyle.
Sanders, who became abusive to Kathy, desperately wanted to change but says, "I didn't know how because I was so hooked on cocaine. It was just a mess." Sadly, Sanders adds, "I thought this was life. This was all I had."
In 1994, Richard met his sister's boyfriend, who was wanting to score some coke. Kathy and Richard obliged him. The boyfriend turned out to be an undercover RCMP officer.
Richard was sentenced to three years in Edmonton Institution. "I was going to the big house," says Sanders.
Before being transferred to the maximum security facility, Sanders poured out his heart to a chaplain at the Edmonton Remand Centre. The chaplain listened compassionately to Sanders' story.
"Do you know that Jesus loves you?" the chaplain asked.
Sanders began to cry.
The chaplain led Sanders through a prayer confessing his sins and asking for God's forgiveness. He then asked Jesus to come into his heart and life. "I felt a tremendous weight lift off of my shoulders," says Sanders.
Kathy could see the difference.
"To see this new person was encouraging," she says. Eventually she too accepted Christ as her Saviour. In 1996 the couple married.
Now 37, Richard is the youth pastor at Edmonton's Shiloh Baptist Church. He also volunteers with various prison ministries, sharing the love and hope of Jesus Christ with inmates. "God is the transformer of lives," he says.
Since his transformation 22 years ago, Colley, 48, is now driving a truck and operating an auto repair shop. He and his wife Claudette have been married for 19 years. Colley also volunteers with New Song Prison Ministries of Bedford, Nova Scotia.
Lewis, who was in and out of prison from his teen years to age 35, is currently the director-founder of Bridges of Canada and Cons for Christ. The primary goal of his work is to "show men that there is hope," says Lewis, who also directs Camp Bar None in New Brunswick, a special camp for children of offenders. Last summer 161 kids attended the camp.
Lewis often speaks at high schools and prisons, bringing a message of hope.
"My life was a write-off," Lewis tells them, "One day I gave Jesus my life - not like I gave Him a gift-wrapped package. I gave Him a mess and He made a message out of it."
Lewis also shares, "If God can do it with me, He can do it with you."
Echoes of Hope
In 1976, as Marvin Beachy was visiting death row inmates in a prison in Alabama, he noticed a man named Charles Harris scribbling something on a small scrap of paper. When he discovered Harris was writing Bible study lessons on cigarette package liners, Beachy decided to help.
He promised God that he would provide Bible studies, if God would provide the funds. Soon, God sent a buyer for Beachy's business and Gospel Echoes Team was born.
Today, it is a Christ-centred ministry headquartered in Goshen, Indiana, where Beachy, 63, serves as president. Currently, 64,000 prisoners across North America study Bible courses provided free of charge by Gospel Echoes. Over 600 volunteers grade the lessons for inmates. Along with the literature, Gospel Echoes sends singing groups into prisons.
Lyndon Reimer and his family form one singing team in Western Canada. Based near Winnipeg, Reimer and his wife Violet, along their three young daughters and two-month-old son, travel to 35 prisons each year. "Musically, we're nothing to write home about," he admits, "[But] the girls just steal the show." Reimer adds, "I think it reminds [the prisoners] of their children."
While at prisons, Reimer hands out easy-to-read New Testaments and one of Gospel Echoes' most popular items - an address booklet.
"Everybody wants one," says Howard Woodruff, Protestant chaplain at Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Centre. "They are the most popular piece of literature that I pass out." Every year Gospel Echoes gives out 350,000 of them.
Included in the booklet is space for addresses and telephone numbers, a two-year calendar, information about Gospel Echoes' Bible studies, and God's plan of salvation. "Christ will cleanse us from sin and give us new life!" it states.
The goal of Gospel Echoes is to share that transforming power with prisoners everywhere. "We have seen the transforming power of God in all kinds of people," says Beachy, "No matter where they are, no matter what they've done."
by Jennifer Jacoby-Smith
"Prison can be described in one word - boredom," says Serge LeClerc of Fonthill, Ontario, "You're counted like pearls and treated like swine."
By his late thirties LeClerc had spent most of his life in detention centres across Ontario and Quebec. He notes, "I've been in every prison in Ontario; I've been in every penitentiary in Quebec."
LeClerc was born to a 14 year old mother in a shack somewhere in New Brunswick or Quebec, the product of a rape. He doesn't know what year.
"When your mother is 13 to 14 years old and she's giving birth to you all by herself in an abandoned building, she isn't paying attention to details," he told Eric White of the St. Catherines Standard last year.
Sometime during his first year, LeClerc's mother moved to Toronto. She worked two dishwashing jobs to survive. At the age of eight, LeClerc was picked up for truancy, and became a ward of the state.
His trouble continued as he ran away from schools and foster homes to live on the street. With a keen business sense, LeClerc quickly graduated up the gang hierarchy. He ran two stills and bootlegged booze across a network of Toronto bars. At 15, he carried a gun and paid $62,000 cash for his first house.
As the '60s ended LeClerc swapped liquor for drugs. Most of his profits went to support his own drug habit. When his habit caused him to lose everything he had, he recalls, "I ended up breaking into a house to get to the refrigerator to get some food."
His time at a maximum security prison at 19 only increased his reputation and business contacts. For the next 15 years LeClerc was in and out of jail.
He was finally busted in the Eastern townships of Quebec with a $40 million drug lab. LeClerc was back in prison.
The days were long and boring. He observes, "Every day is the same, with an edge of violence."
While incarcerated, he met a Prison Fellowship Ministry volunteer, who gave him a newsletter to read. In it he found the story of a friend who had come to know Jesus Christ as his Saviour while serving time. The last line of the story said, "For the first time in my life I've come to know freedom and peace of mind."
"The words in that last line just kept bouncing around my head," says LeClerc, "I just couldn't get them out of my head."
Feeling like his life was "a pile of dung," LeClerc contemplated killing himself.
A young boy in the next cell ended up committing suicide, only adding to his feeling of hopelessness. Because of his own suicidal thoughts, LeClerc was sent to a special handling unit in the maximum security facility, where he would have access to a chapel.
There he met more Prison Fellowship volunteers. "[They] told me God never created garbage, and that Jesus Christ died for me," says LeClerc. He didn't believe them at first. After a few months he observed the volunteers and realized they not only believed what they were saying, they lived like it, too.
On December 25, 1985, LeClerc asked Jesus to forgive his sins and invited Him into his heart. "Jesus Christ says to come the way you are. And I'll help you clean up," says LeClerc.
LeClerc adds, "I was smoking about a quarter ounce of hash a week and was carrying a homemade prison shank taped to my left arm. Every second word was a swear word with a grade five education."
In 1991 LeClerc graduated on the Dean's list with a Bachelor's degree in sociology. Four years later he added an Honours degree with a minor in social work. Gifted as a motivational speaker, LeClerc gives targeted talks to police officers, educators, businessmen, as well as high school students about the realities of drugs, alcohol, bullying and violence.
Now 53, LeClerc is President of Career 7 Associates. He also serves as community resource advisor to the RCMP in Aboriginal communities throughout Saskatchewan, Quebec, and the North West Territories and works with Crime Stoppers.
Fifteen years after accepting Christ's forgiveness, LeClerc received a full pardon from the Government of Canada for his dramatic turnaround and tireless work with troubled youth. For someone with his criminal record, such clemency is unprecedented.
"There truly is only one way to live life that is fulfilling, that brings freedom and peace of mind," says LeClerc, "The day that I gave my life to Christ, that began to be achieved for me."
"Jesus came to set the prisoners free," he adds. "Free not only from prisons of concrete and steel, but from prisons inside of us."
