“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” – Hebrews 13:3

For lesson four we printed Prisoner Profiles from Prisoner Alert and Release International.  As a class we prayed for the prisoners and asked God to put a prisoner on each of our hearts that he wanted us to pray for and write letters to.

Prisoner Alert a ministry under the Voice of the Martyr’s: http://www.prisoneralert.com/

Release International: http://www.releaseinternational.org/

We each made prayer boards for the Prisoner Profiles we chose.  We used black foam poster boards for the boards, and cut strips of red paper into strips to frame the profiles.  We attached the prisoner profiles onto the prayer boards with double stick tape.  We were able to purchase all of the supplies we used at the Dollar Store.

We meant to play a song about forgiveness by Gilbert Hovsepian called, I Forgive You.  He wrote the song after his father, a pastor in Iran, was martyred for his faith when Gilbert was seventeen.  We meant to play that video on YouTube, but we accidently played a music video A Letter From Prison that included an interview with him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoPGQkkIHtg

He told a story about a divine encounter that occurred while he was visiting a foreign country.   A lady recognized him and knew him by name.  She told him that missionaries from her church in Holland visited Iran, they took photos of persecuted families.   When they returned to the Netherlands, church members chose one picture to pray for.  She chose his and had been praying for him for fifteen years.

We had just been talking about how we would be developing real relationships with the people we were praying for.  Gilbert’s story really emphasized that truth.