I knew a Gideon member who told me of a conference in NYC where a prisoner was allowed to come and speak of his conversion experience. He was a hardened criminal with mental issue and a very violent temper and a killer but was illiterate and close to retarded. He said one night that “the dude came with a book and asked him to read it but the prisoner said he couldn’t read it.(he had been in solitary or a cell to himself apparently) So “everynight the dude would come and teach him to read slowly over a period of several months out of this book”.As he learned to read with the help of “the dude” the prisoner came to know the love of Jesus and became a Christian for he had gained a working reading knowledge of English through the King James Bible!!!
The prison officials were aghast at the drastic changes in the prisoner and astonished at his ability to read and no one ever could figure out who “the dude” was or ever saw him on camera or how anyone named “the dude” had slipped him a Bible. ‘The dude” apparently stopped visiting though Jesus had become a permanent part of the prisoner’s life.
The last I had heard of this story, the prisoner had been allowed to leave the prison to go on these conferences and he would go back and check himself back in at Rikers. This was about 19 years ago. I don’t know if he has since been let out or has passed away. I think he was in for at least a very long time but why he wasn’t upstate I don’t know, might have been considered more of a mental health case than a hardened prisoner.
Awmazing story! Gideon stories are the best.