Jun 13

Discipleship Tools for Prisoners

News

Occasionally, as we process inmate requests or writings, we research the situation of an inmate. Many of them have been featured in news stories and information about their crimes is public.

Putting the pieces together, we find lives that are steeped in tragedy, often from childhood. Bad decisions compounded with bad circumstances create situations so complex and sad that a good resolution seems impossible for both the criminal and victim.

Our goal is to bring the love and power of Jesus to these situations. It is an overwhelming task, but tools such as the Loaves & Fishes magazine make the task more doable.

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Feb 01

Insights From the Team

Loaves & Fishes , News

As we enter the new year, we want to acknowledge your support and participation in this work of reaching prisoners through the printed page. With your help, we were able to distribute 206,000 copies of Loaves & Fishes magazine, 30,000 Lighthouse calendars, and 3,000 miscellaneous tracts, booklets, and bookmarks in 2014.

Now that Jimmy Weaver is retired, he’s able to devote more time to Lighthouse. Things are going smoothly and he’s staying current with data entry and orders. He is also learning more about subscription management and how to troubleshoot undeliverable mail to prisoners who happened to provide a name the prison mail room doesn’t recognize.

My dad (Darold) works part-time from his office in Iowa. His experience and assistance as circulation manager is invaluable as we transition to more books going out in bulk and build connections with our vital distributors. He also enjoys helping to prepare new issues of Loaves & Fishes.

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Dec 11

Issue 25 Progress

Loaves & Fishes , News

We are excited to announce that the funds have come in for printing Loaves & Fishes Issue 25! As it stands now, we will print 95,000 copies and the cost will be close to $15,000.

L&F-25-Cover, 3d Stack

This issue isn’t quite ready to print, but we hope to send it to press before the holidays, and the books should arrive shortly after the first of the year.

We estimate the postage will cost around $6,200. Our goal is to have enough funds to mail all the subscriptions by the time the books arrive so we can mail them promptly. So far we have a couple thousand dollars to put toward postage, but it will take at least another $4,000.

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Nov 19

The Mail and Cutting Cost

News

The mailing of Loaves & Fishes Issue 24 in September generated a lot of incoming prisoner mail. Most of the mail simply requires data entry, but some of it takes letter writing or pen pal management, etc. Here is a picture I just took of the incoming mail bin:

Mail Bin

The Lord has blessed us in allowing Jimmy Weaver to join the team here. He has done well in learning our software and workflow, and is looking forward to spending more time here after he retires in December.

Jimmy and I usually get the orders ready for the post office, and we take mail in once or twice a week. Some days it’s mostly a bunch of envelopes containing booklets and tracts, but occasionally we also have a handful of boxes to mail to new chaplains or someone replenishing their inventory.

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