The Zone Gathering

By Omar Morillo

This is Part 11 in our series on Service. Today, small group leader extraordinaire, Omar Morillo, shares his own remarkable experience with Angel Tree.

Each Christmas, prison chaplains, Prison Fellowship, and Christian churches make available a program called Angel Tree Christmas for prisoners to give gifts to their children.

Last year our group decided to get involved with Angel Tree. The young boy our group sponsored got involved with Angel Tree in a very unusual way. The church that the boy and his mother attend decided to visit a penitentiary in the state of Virginia. The purpose of the visit was for inmates to encourage young people in the church not to make the same mistakes they had made.

During this visit to the penitentiary the boy made a providential connection with one of the inmates. This inmate had recently come to know the Lord. He had become so devoted to God that he would not stop reading the Bible and telling other inmates about Jesus. He was doing this at a high cost since other inmates would inflict serious physical abuse upon him because he was a Christian. Surprisingly, this inmate was the one who decided to enroll the boy in Angel Tree even though he was not his father. Following this encounter, the inmate began to correspond regularly with the boy and his mother. In his letters he would always mention how much he loved reading God’s Word.

When I called the mother and explained to her that her son was in the Angel Tree program and that we wanted to buy a gift for him, she was somewhat confused and suspicious. However, when I started to speak to her in Spanish and told her that the inmate her son had met a few months back had enrolled him in the program, she immediately felt at ease. She started telling me about how the Lord had brought her son and the inmate together and how much love the inmate had shown her son. She told me to pray for her son because his father had abandoned him and he was starting to associate with the wrong crowd.

When I delivered the gift the mother welcomed me with a big smile. Her son, on the other hand, was very shy and I could immediately tell that he was struggling with so many issues; pain and anger were written all over his face. Afterwards, the mother and I took the elevator down to the lobby of her apartment and we prayed together. With tears in her eyes she told me to pray for her son because he was increasingly coming under the influence of gangs and she feared for his safety. She told me she needed God’s wisdom because, in order to protect her son, she was thinking of sending him back to their native country to live with extended family.

I honestly feel that the Angel Tree program was as much of a blessing to me as to this mother and her son. I received the gift of seeing God’s fatherly love for me reflected in an inmate’s love for a fatherless child. It was a reminder that I have been adopted as God’s son and that he loves me so much. I would encourage others to get involved in Angel Tree. Like this boy, there are so many young boys and girls longing for the love of a father or mother. This is one way we can let them know there is a heavenly Father that loves and cares for them. Get involved. You may be surprised at how God blesses you!

About the Author: Omar Morillo has been a small group leader at NCC for over 6 years. He and his wife, Janelle, currently lead the Wednesday night Northern Virginia Group. Omar has an amazing teaching gift and a big heart for people.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 10:30 am and is filed under Leadership Lessons, Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.