January DOTK

Mary Kay Beard was once on America’s Most Wanted List and served seven years in prison before “surrendering to Jesus.” She attended junior college while in prison in Alabama, graduated with a near-perfect average and earned a scholarship to Auburn University. Later, Mary Kay graduated from Auburn with honors and finished her Master’s Degree there in Education.

Today, she serves Impact Family Counseling as Lead Counselor and works with troubled youth in Alabama, trying to re-direct youngsters away from the prison experience she had once faced.

As the head of Prison Fellowship Alabama, Mary Kay met with local churches and volunteers about which prisons they would visit for Christmas and what gifts would they take. Experience led Mary Kay to say, “Everyone does that. Let’s do something different.” Out of that meeting, the Angel Tree Program was born.

Children of America’s prisoners are at high risk of child abuse and neglect, illiteracy, drug and alcohol abuse, crime, violence, incarceration, and premature death. Over 1,500,000 children right here in America suffer poverty and abuse because one or both of their parents are serving time.

Christmas is an especially difficult time for children whose moms and dads are imprisoned. Angel Tree reaches out to kids struggling because their parents have been sent away by providing Christmas gifts to them given in the name of an absent parent. Volunteers from local churches deliver the gifts and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with these children. Lives are being changed and the cycle of violence broken.

What began with a handful of volunteers in Alabama two shopping malls branched to 12 states the following year and was soon restructured as a church-based program. Nearly 600,000 children were reached Christmas 2000, bringing the cumulative total to more than five million children served by Angel Tree.

“Angel Tree was not my project, it wasn’t even my idea. It was God’s idea. He just allowed me to be the instrument that He used to plant the seed. It was the church, the Body of Christ, who come along to water and to nurture it.” Mary Kay Beard