Once “a menace to society”…
Jordan was transformed!
“I found Jesus in prison—or rather, He found me,” Jordan says.
You won't want to miss his amazing story.
Dear John,
Like so many of the men I meet behind bars, Jordan Jenke went wrong at an early age. He remembers himself as an angry child. He was the product of an abusive home.
His story is tragic. But I hope you'll read all of it. You see, Jordan is proof that the Gospel changes lives.
I hope Jordan's story will inspire you, because you made it possible to reach him. And there's someone else like him you can reach today.
Your Gift Will Be Doubled
Jordan was caught in a vicious cycle
Jordan started using drugs while he was still very young. “I didn’t like myself, and I didn’t like my family,” he says. There was a void in his heart, and he was hungry to fill it.
One thing led to another. Before he knew it, Jordan was addicted. With time, methamphetamines became something he “could not live without.” Jordan had a family by then. But, in his own words, “I put my family on the back burner.” He began stealing to feed his addiction. That led to trouble with the law.
Jordan was in and out of the county jail. He often missed court dates. There were multiple warrants for his arrest. “When I slept, it was in my car,” Jordan recalls, “because I knew if the police found me I was going back to jail.”
Eventually, he was caught. “I was looking at five years in prison,” Jordan remembers, “which, to me, at that point, seemed like a lifetime.” Broken, Jordan fell to his knees and started crying. “I started praying to God, telling Him that I was sorry for what I had become. I asked Him to forgive me,” he says. The road ahead would not be easy. But God answered Jordan's prayer through people like you.
Your gift to share the Gospel with a prisoner will be doubled!
He called out to Jesus from a lonely prison cell
“Jesus became real to me in prison,” Jordan says. A fellow prisoner had given him a Bible. Reading that Bible fed a hunger in his soul. But Jordan’s heart still ached. You see, by the time Jordan was sent to prison, he had a little boy of his own named Jared, whose name we've changed to protect his privacy.
“Being an incarcerated father is awful,” Jordan recalls. “You miss so much. You stare out the window at Christmas. You pray that your children will know the Lord. You dream they will forgive you for the person you were.”
Jordan longed for a way to have a relationship with his son, but he feared it would never happen. Until he discovered Angel Tree.
Through Angel Tree, people like you helped Jordan reach out to his son. Angel Tree became the first ray of hope in their relationship. But that is only one small part of the miracle God has done in Jordan's life because of you and others.
Will you help repeat that miracle for another prisoner today?
You helped transform him
When Jordan was released from prison eight years ago, the parole board didn't have much faith in him. Their report called him “incorrigible” and “a menace to society.” But, instead of getting mad, Jordan set out to prove them wrong.
The first year was tough, he admits. “Nobody wanted to hire an ex-felon.” But, through a friend, Jordan found a side job doing landscaping. After learning about that trade by working for others, he decided to start his own business.
Within two years, Jordan's landscaping business had 14 employees. Like Jordan, many of them were former prisoners.
Jordan sees his business as a ministry to men and women who need a second chance. “God has bigger plans for people like us,” he says. Today he also serves as a volunteer with Prison Fellowship in Monterey, California. God has transformed him as a husband and father, too.
After his release, Jordan met and married his wife Antonette. Together they have two beautiful children, a boy named Darius and a girl named Seraphina. He continues to work on his relationship with his older son, Jared, and says, “We've made a lot of progress.”
“On the roughest days, I can't take the simple gifts of fatherhood for granted,” Jordan adds, “because I know how painful it is to have those opportunities taken away.”
Your Gift Will Be Doubled
There’s another prisoner who needs you now
By God’s grace, and because of you, Jordan is no longer the man he used to be. But there's another prisoner who still needs your help to turn around. For this man or woman, the future still hangs in the balance.
Your generous gift today will make it possible to share the Gospel with that prisoner and many others—at Hope Events, the Prison Fellowship Academy, by delivering Bibles, and so much more.
Your gift today will also be doubled by a matching grant—up to $25,000!
Please help now while your gift will go twice as far. So many who are in prison desperately need a reason to hope.
Yours in His service,
Your Gift Will Be Doubled
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