A retired school teacher and prison inmates are unlikely pen pals who have exchanged thousands of letters in Curitiba over the past decade.<\/p>\n
It began when a man in prison responded to a short piece 76-year-old Dona Maria Martins published in a devotional magazine in 2006. She replied to the letter that arrived at her church\u2019s address, and soon found herself responding to dozens of letters each week from inmates seeking pastoral care<\/p>\n
\u201cOften these men are abandoned by their families,\u201d Dona Maria says. \u201cI became a spiritual mother to them.\u201d Her letters tell about Jesus and usually include illustrations clipped from magazines.<\/p>\n
Now a small circle of women from Igreja Evang\u00e9lica Menonita \u00c1gua Verde (Green Water Mennonite Church) join Dona Maria several times a week to read and answer correspondence. Inmates often request Bibles, so the Mennonites of Curitiba designed a Bible correspondence course. Hundreds of inmates have completed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod is love,\u201d Dona Maria declares, \u201cand the letters are my way of sharing that good news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014J. Nelson Kraybill, MWC president<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A retired school teacher and prison inmates are unlikely pen pals who have exchanged thousands of letters in Curitiba over the past decade. It began when a man in prison responded to a short piece 76-year-old Dona Maria Martins published in a devotional magazine in 2006. She replied to the letter that arrived at her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"network":[],"eventcategory":[],"class_list":["post-6520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n