P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

LONNIE: Imagine being so lonely that you write yourself a letter. You’ll here about prisoners that do that today, but you’ll also learn about the Paper Sunshine project, a Pen pal program, and how you can brighten someone’s environment, and yours too.

CONNIE: Hello everyone, I’m Connie Jeffery. We are talking to Don and Yvonne McClure this week, here’s Lonnie again.

LONNIE: Don and Yvonne McClure, welcome back to our program today. Don you’ve been there, you’ve done that. In fact, while you were in prison you stabbed a guard once.

DON: Yeah, I went into prison with an attitude, and everyone kept trying to bust it, and break it up. I spent a lot of time in solitary; I hit the warden once even.

LONNIE: Did you kill the guard?

DON: No! Prison violence is so rampant today, and that’s why regeneration is so important, because rehabilitation doesn’t work. Let me tell you a great story real quick. We may be coming back to California part time. California did away with trying to rehabilitate men all together, and they have decided to lock them up and throw away the key, but now…see prison is big business. People don’t realize that they won’t your sons and daughters in prison; they don’t want them out in the streets. It costs almost 80,000 dollars in California to incarcerate only one person, now do you think that goes to that one person. There’s no schools, or chapel programs they have all been cut. If Yvonne hadn’t have done what she did at San Quentin, a lot of men wouldn’t know Christ. When we really…

LONNIE: Tell us how Yvonne got the name double trouble.

DON: When we got into the teeth of prison ministry, wee decided…we de3cided to get into the gut and the bowls of this prison. We need to get where the unwanted and unwashed are. So, we started a ministry in the hole, and so we were at a place in San Quentin called C Section, a terrible place, 5 floors high with 50 cells on each tear, and Yvonne and I carried Bibles and stuff along the cell floor ways. Yvonne used to go out in the yard and point up in the sky and inmates would ask her what she was pointing at, and she replied that’s where Jesus is coming from. And that’ is how Yvonne would carry Bible studies. But I lost her in the hole one day. Now, losing your wife in the supermarket or the mall with your money is scary enough, but losing her in prison…well, I left that in the Lord’s hands…finally we met back up at the car, and she said, honey, I sort of made a promise. Well she said, I promised this guy a letter that hadn’t had one in 17 years that I would get some one to writer to him. And I said, piece of cake. I got home found two people And they said that they would write him. We went back to that tear 3 weeks later, and the guy had shared the letters with everybody. Now everybody wanted a person to write too.

YVONNE: And I was in trouble.

DON: Thus starting the pen friend project, and labeling Yvonne double-trouble, which we called it Paper Sunshine.

LONNIE: Tell us how many prisoners don’t get letters in 17 years.

DON: So many.

LONNIE: How come their families, wives, children, pastors, why don’t they write them?

DON: Because their in prison. It’s embarrassing for them to own up to their own failures. Pastors tell me, Don, do your job, but don’t send those prisoners to our churches when they get out. .

LONNIE: So, how do you guys keep this Paper Sunshine project safe?

DON: Well, Yvonne and I sit around and open all of the letters, and we watch a lot of sports while we do these letters. We don’t allow sexual overtones, or people asking for money and the inmates know this. Lonnie, there is something in the world…you know if you help someone it feels good. When we help one of these inmates find a pen friend, we also enroll them in Bible School Lessons. And, we have had almost 750, 000 inmates complete the Bible studies.

LONNIE: Wow! Yvonne, if I want to get involved in this prison ministry thing, how does your average person get involve?

YVONNE: You write to us and we put our PO Box on the envelope…you never have your stuff and information put out their to them.

LONNIE: What about those who act inappropriately?

YVONNE: We send those back.

LONNIE: What is your address?

YVONNE: PO Box 15338, Ft Wayne, IN 46885.

LONNIE: You said the reform rate is just not working.

DON: Recidivism is about 70%, with God in their lives, it’s about 7%.

LONNIE: We’ll talk more tomorrow!

CONNIE: Just in case you missed the information for Don and Yvonne’s ministry, you can call them at: 260-492-7770, or you can write to the McClure’s at, PO Box 15338, Ft Wayne, IN 46885. The website is at someonecares.org.