环球英语 — 463：Angel Tree
Voice 1
Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Adam Navis.
Voice 2
And I’m Christy VanArragon. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 1
Mary Kay Mahaffey had a bad family life. Her father drank alcohol all the time. And he was violent towards Mary Kay. He treated her badly. She did not have any money but she knew she had to get away from him.
Voice 2
Her solution was a man named Paul. Only nine days after meeting him, they were married. But soon she found out he was a gambler. He risked money on games of chance. He had been to prison for stealing. Mary did not want to judge him by his past. She believed people could change. But Paul had not changed. And she was pulled into his life of crime.
Voice 1
Finally, Paul left Mary Kay. But she did not leave her life of crime. She started working with some friends, Ed and Joe. Once, Joe refused to give Mary her share of the money. So she shot him in the leg. Ed told her, “You are insane woman! You really do not care about anything.” Mary Kay later said,
Voice 3
“He was right. My only reasons for doing anything were anger and to get back at people. I did not care about anything. Life had been nothing but a series of regrets and disappointments.”
Voice 2
For five years, Mary Kay Mahaffey kept moving across the United States. She travelled around robbing banks and avoiding the police. But finally, she was caught and locked away in prison.
Voice 1
One day, Mary Kay decided to start attending the prison church services. She thought she had done too many bad things to become a Christian. Then she read in the Christian Bible,
Voice 4
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
Voice 1
The words gave her a hope that she had never felt before. Mary Kay prayed,
Voice 3
“Ok, God, my life is in complete disorder. If you mean what you say here in the Bible, please change my heart.”
Voice 2
God changed her heart and her life too. After six years in prison, Mary Kay was released early for good behaviour. Soon after, she began working for an organization called Prison Fellowship.
Voice 1
Prison Fellowship works to help prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families. They base their work on a verse in the Christian Bible where Jesus said,
Voice 4
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me ... I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of these, you did for me.”
Voice 1
Prison Fellowship believes that by serving other people, especially the poor, they serve Jesus Christ.
Voice 2
Mary Kay’s job was to create a program that would serve prisoners at Christmas. As in many places, Christmas in the United States is celebrated by Christians to mark the birth of Jesus Christ. But it is also celebrated by non-Christians as a time of family, friends, and gift-giving.
When Mary Kay was in prison Christian groups would bring in small tubes of toothpaste, bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo as gifts for the prisoners. The women who never went to church services always went to get these things.
Voice 3
“I thought these women were greedy. But they would divide the things into groups. Each group was for one of their children. That is all they had to give their children as Christmas gifts. I thought, ‘Just because she’s a prisoner does not mean she does not love her children. It does not mean she is a bad mother.’ ”
Voice 1
Mary Kay wanted to help the prisoners provide better gifts for their children.
Voice 3
“We made paper angels - red for girls and green for boys - and on each angel we wrote the name and age of a child. And then we put them on a tree, an Angel Tree! That’s how we got the name.”
“Children are the real victims of crime. They are not responsible for what their parents do and yet they suffer. Children who have one adult in prison are six times more likely to get into trouble as other children. I hoped we could get gifts for two or three hundred [200-300] children. I had no idea what God would do.
“At the end of that first Angel Tree Project, over five hundred and fifty [550] children had received up to four different gifts.”
“Angel Tree was not my project, it was not even my idea. It was God’s idea. He just permitted me to be the instrument that He used.”
Voice 1
One woman, named Tracy, tells this story about Angel Tree.
Voice 5
"My brother, Jose, is serving thirty two [32] years in prison. He signed up his children for Angel Tree. He used my telephone number as the contact.
Before Christmas, I received a call from a woman saying she had chosen Jose’s children. We set a meeting time for her to bring the gifts to my house on Christmas morning.
On Christmas Day, I opened the door to find a woman with gifts in her hands. I invited her in and we began to talk about Jose. I was able to share with her how he had accepted Christ and how he is building a relationship with God. She said to me,
Voice 6
"I need to tell you something, I know you and Jose. I saw you the day he was sentenced. I am part of the victim’s family.”
“Last month my family was at church, and our son went up to choose the names of the children we would buy gifts for. When I read the name, I could not believe it. I wanted to put it back,”
“Then I remembered my prayer on the day of sentencing. After seeing Jose in person I understood that his own family were also victims in this terrible situation.”
Voice 5
"The woman said that she cried when her son gave her that Angel Tree paper. But she knew this was not an accident. God was answering her prayers.
We cried together. She is a wonderful woman who loves God and wants to be used by Him. And God answered her prayer by using Angel Tree to make this happen.”
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