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What a month it has been! The Jack Brewer Foundation has been overwhelmed with gratitude. We have seen lives changed, families restored, and hope ignited, and we are so thankful for the opportunities we have been given to love and serve those in our communities and around the nation.
As we reflect on the things we’ve seen and the stories we’ve heard, we cannot help but look to you, our donors and partners, to share our thankfulness toward your contributions.
You are making a difference by the way you generously give and support us, and we are so excited to share with you some of the incredible things that have happened this past month.
Here are just some of the highlights:
Each month, we see more and more people reaching out to the JBF for support, financial help, and encouragement. In ways both big and small, we are finding ways to meet the needs of those in our communities and around the world so that every person we come in contact with can know the love of Jesus Christ.
One small but impactful way we are helping to restore families is through our sports scholarships. These are available to any youth under the age of 18 who has an incarcerated father.
The men in our programs get to fill out an application for their children, which includes a short bio and backstory, and then our team reviews the applications to approve the scholarships.
Many of the children who receive these scholarships share that they share a love of their sport with their fathers, making their ability to play them even more meaningful and important.
In June, we gave 2 sports scholarships. In July, we’ve given 5 already, and we are currently processing another 11 scholarships!
Family reunification stories are one of the best things we get to experience, and one from early July has made a permanent impact on our hearts and minds. Jeremy Power is serving a life sentence at Jefferson Correctional Institution.
About 18 months ago, we were able to help Mr. Power reunite with his mother and sister, who he hadn’t seen in two and ten years, respectively. Our team provided housing, travel expenses, and meals at that time.
This past Fourth of July weekend, we were able to help Mr. Powers’ wife, Lisa, and his grandson, Kayson, visit him. It had been three years since Kayson has seen his grandfather, and during this visit, they were able to see one another face-to-face, talk about life, and share a hug.
Mr. Powers is proving that even a life sentence can’t stop him from being a positive influence and a strong presence in his family’s lives. He is a gifted artist and continues to mentor and lead others as he continues to grow in God’s strength, and we are honored to have been a part of his reunification story.
Our first High Acuity Youth group got to celebrate all the growth of the last year on an end-of-summer field trip earlier this month. Our team wanted to celebrate their accomplishments and encourage them to have a positive start to the upcoming school year.
We started by having them participate in a JBF food distribution, and then we had a picnic lunch and spent some time at the beach. They got to play football, play basketball, swim, and build relationships with one another.
Next, the kids got to continue being kids during a trip to a local trampoline park, where they played dodgeball and trampoline basketball. Many of these young men have given their lives to Christ recently, and our team has loved watching them continuously pursue the Lord and make choices that reflect this life-changing decision.
We hope and plan to schedule many of their baptisms soon, encouraging them to approach the new school year strong in their faith and equipped with the full armor of God.
One of the world’s largest maximum security prisons recently opened its doors to our team, and we are so thankful for the opportunity to bring our programs there. Angola Prison, also known as the Louisiana State Penitentiary, has around 5,000 prisoners and sits on 28 square miles of land. Around 75% of the inmates at Angola are serving life sentences.
Our first visit to the state penitentiary challenged many of our preconceived notions about prisons, and we were left in awe of the many eye-opening things we saw and experienced. Angola has a unique model in place that makes the institution almost entirely self-sufficient.
Prisoners work in the fields cultivating food that they will eat, men handcraft teddy bears that are given to visitors to the facility, and inmates can participate in a number of vocational programs, such as woodworking, leather crafting, welding, barbering, culinary arts, and more.
What we didn’t expect to see was the pride, purpose, and work ethic exhibited in the men working at their various tasks. Angola fosters responsibility, trust, and meaningful opportunities for its inmates, and they already have a strong culture of mentorship, and we are honored to bring our Fatherhood programs to this institution.
Our team left our Angola visit inspired by the possibilities and encouraged by the partnership opportunity with the incredibly supportive administration and staff at the prison. We believe that hundreds of men and their families can and will benefit from our programs to strengthen families, restore hope, and train fathers to positively influence those around them.
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