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by Lynette Kittle
North to Alaska!
Alaska is sometimes referred to as the “Last Frontier” with its expansive mountains, frozen tundra, giant glaciers and untapped resources. For Joyce Meyer Ministries’ Hand of Hope Prison Ministry, this term has rung true. Until recently, the outreach had touched every state prison system in the United States with a single exception—Alaska. After years of praying for God to open a door into the Alaska prison system, it finally happened. And when God opens a door of opportunity, that’s when you walk through; even if that door leads north to Alaska at the coldest time of the year!
In preparation, gift bags for the prisoners were shipped to Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks to be delivered to eight prisons located in Anchorage, Seward, Kenai, Eagle River, Palmer, Fairbanks and Juneau. Each bag contains soap, shampoo, a letter from Dave and Joyce and a Joyce Meyer book. Quality bath products are items prisoners don’t have access to, so these gifts demonstrate that someone cares and are often the very things that open the prisoners’ hearts to reading Joyce’s book.
“There’s a time,” states Prison Ministry supervisor, Roy Lormis, “when inmates realize that, ‘Man, this lifestyle is not working,’ and Joyce’s books speak volumes to them. Once they get it from their head to their heart, it’s just like, ‘Okay, we can do this.’
Then God will do a totally sovereign work in their lives.”
Forget-Me-Not
Alaska’s state flower is the forget-me-not, which serves as a good reminder. “Jesus said, ‘Don’t forget those who are in prison,’ asserts Lormis, ’but remember them like you remember Me.’ Most prisoners don’t have visitors because by the time they have gotten there, they’ve burned bridges behind them.” He notes that during the winter there is a greater chance of inmates committing suicide, especially in Alaska where it is dark much of the time. Daylight only lasts a few hours a day, and the extra darkness adds to the depression that many already feel.
One of these prisons, the Palmer Correctional Facility, is considered to be one of the coldest prisons in the United States because temperatures sometimes reach sixty degrees below zero. But gifts of love for each inmate and chapel services
where many inmates received salvation through Christ warmed up the atmosphere like nothing else could.
Staking Claims in Northern Territory
Overall in Alaska, Hand of Hope distributed 3,596 gift bags, held five services with 395 in attendance, and witnessed 181 men and women give their lives to Christ. “You can’t go until someone sends you,” notes Lormis. “I take what we do very seriously, and I think that we’re really making a difference. All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you, to all our Joyce Meyer Ministries partners who have made it possible and for the opportunity given us to plunder hell and populate heaven. We covered a lot of territory!”
What a blessing it is that God has now allowed us to minister in each of the fifty United States! And Alaska’s prison inmates shared their gratitude as well, over and over. No one can describe the impact that our friends and partners make possible through this prison outreach better than one of those prisoners who has been directly impacted by it. Lorena, who is incarcerated in the Eagle River Corrections Department Facility, shares her story in her own words:
“I came into the system when I was twelve years old. I was a runaway and I ended up in the streets as a prostitute to supply my drug and alcohol addictions. I was in and out of juvenile hall until I reached the age where they started putting me in jail. This was natural for me because that’s all I knew.
I became hard and calloused and had no time for a relationship with Christ, let alone anybody else. My relationship was with my drugs and my alcohol. I felt very disconnected from life, and I wanted to kill myself many times. I tried to take my life in several different ways, trying to end my existence. So when I got out (of prison), I ended up back in the streets, selling my body and doing the things that I needed to do—I thought—to exist.
In the year 2000, I committed first degree armed robbery here in Alaska and received a ten year sentence for that. When I first came to this prison, I wanted to kill myself. I had plans of tying a sheet around my neck and jumping off the top balcony. I ended up in a mental health unit. During that time, I started seeing things in the Word because all I was allowed to have was a Bible. I would read the Word of God, and I wanted so much for it to relate to me.
When I got out of the mental health unit, I ended up in open population. I started going to the chaplain’s library and that’s where I was introduced to Joyce Meyer Ministries. I was introduced to books like The Word, the Name, the Blood. I looked at her videos and I watched other videos, too. They told me of the life of Jesus Christ and how He went to the cross to die for my sins and that He loved me—even me, a prostitute—that He loved me. I had never experienced that kind of love. So, I held fast to it and I read the Word of God all the time. I began praying with people and I received Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.
At first I felt like God couldn’t hear my prayers. I was encouraged by many people that I’ve known for years and they told me, 'That’s not true, Lorena. Read the Word of God.' I prayed a prayer of confession. It says in 1 John 1:9 that if I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me of my sins.
Ever since then, things have been changing in my life. I am planning to go to the Lydia House, which is a faith-based transitional living house here in Eagle River for Christian women who want their lives to change. I just don’t plan to go back and do the same things and be disobedient. I grew up here. In prison I learned how to love the Lord and how He loves me through ministries like Joyce Meyer Ministries.
It still means everything when I’m alone at night and I’m in my bed and the enemy comes in my head and tells me how unworthy I am, what a piece of no-good nothing I am. Then what happens is, I get something in the mail or I get a letter from Joyce Meyer Ministries and it tells me that somebody out there is praying for me—that somebody does care about me. It means everything because when your parents aren’t there and your sisters and brothers aren’t there, you feel all alone inside a cell. You know that you’ve done so much wrong and
somebody is actually saying, ‘It’s going to be okay. You can change. Jesus Christ can help you change your life. Give Him a chance. It works!’” 
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