Write, paint, love

A youth group from the Gellert Church in Basel spent seven days on mission in Moldova with ACP. The young people also learnt about our work in the Rusca women's prison. ACP has been delivering parcels to the inmates there before Christmas for eight years now. "You can't imagine how happy the women in prison are when visitors from abroad come and bring each of them a present!" says our Moldova project manager Hanspeter “Hampi” Lehmann.

This touched the young people from Basel very much - so much so that they decided to contribute self-designed cards with Bible verses in Romanian to this year's Christmas parcels. For weeks and months, the young people wrote, drew and painted Bible verses in a language that was foreign to them. And recently they presented us with a bundle of around 500 artistic cards.

In just a few days' time, another lorry full of Christmas parcels will pull up outside the Rusca women's prison. Hampi will be there again this year: "I'm looking forward to seeing how the women are touched by God's love. And I can't wait to see their reactions when they receive such lovingly designed cards from young Swiss people they don't even know!"

There are some women here in Rusca who have decided to live with Jesus. One of them is Diana, who served a sentence of seven and a half years in this institution for fraud offences. During this time, she often spent time in the prayer room and eventually gave her life to Jesus. Diana and her husband, also an ex-convict, are now free again. "It's amazing to see what a completely different life the two of them now lead!" says Hampi. Since Diana has been free again, she has been helping ACP to distribute the parcels to the prison women - women of whom she still knows some. The action is accompanied by lots of hugs and tears.