October 11, 2003

Dear Friend:

Maurice (name changed) walked into my office this week with his trademark smile beaming across his face.  He’s been out of the area for a number of years, and this was the first time we’d been together in a long time.  A flood of memories came back to me as we sat and talked for a few minutes.

Maurice’s life has never been an easy one.  Until he was nineteen, he didn’t even know his real last name.  At the tender age of three he was removed from an abusive mother who had broken his jaw beating him.  He ended up with a kind couple who had helped raise over 100 foster children and adopted 13 kids, including Maurice.  Many of their adopted children became a part of Aslan, but Maurice was the one we spent the most time with.  Although he was classified by the schools as a slow learner, he was likeable and deceptively intelligent. 

More than anything, Maurice needed a huge dose of common sense.  His first brush with the law came as a sixth grader when he took some candy from a local bodega, and finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time was Maurice’s specialty.  Unfortunately this happened once too many times in high school, and he found himself as an eighteen-year-old sentenced to 3 years in state prison.  We worked vigorously to help him with his public defender (a dedicated and wonderful attorney).  The evidence he’d committed a crime at all was flimsy at best, but the judge wasn’t in an understanding or forgiving mood the day Maurice was sentenced.  His public defender cried when she heard the judge lay down the sentence.

That could have been a “life” sentence for this impressionable young man.  State prisons are not nice places, and way too often African-American teens become career criminals through circumstances like these.  In order to literally survive you usually have to join an in-prison gang.  Aslan, however, didn’t give up on Maurice, and he refused to give up on himself. 
During his time in prison, we continued to stay in close touch by mail and phone.  We also traveled to visit him as often as we could.  Several times a week Maurice called us collect at home – often late at night just before the cellblock was locked down.  We spent hours encouraging him and praying with him that he would survive.  A particularly dangerous and violent gang known as the “Five Percenters” did everything they could to intimidate and break Maurice.  He was so confused and under such stress that he was often crying when he called us.  He wanted to believe the things he’d learned in Aslan’s Right Choices classes about God’s love.  The Five Percenters, however, were twisting his mind with their lies and distortions and Maurice was like a wind-blown leaf. 

After 13 months he was fortunately granted an early release and returned to this area.  He served on Aslan’s staff before moving to Georgia.  For the past several years, he’s been traveling around the country as a stage hand for a theater arts company.  He has big dreams to start his own music production company.  I’m unsure whether these dreams will come true, but one thing I am sure of is how well-grounded Maurice is in his walk with God.  He still has plenty of life’s problems, but there’s no question he wants to please God through the way he lives.  He’d be the first to tell you that Aslan has been there for him every step along the way and that God is the reason he’s still standing today. 

Maurice is back out on the road again, and we ask for your prayers for him.  Despite the enormous odds against him from birth, he’s walking a path that few would have imagined.  It’s extremely doubtful it would ever have happened if Aslan hadn’t been here for him – time and time and time again. 

Without you and those like you who provide financial support for our work, there would be no help for Maurice and the hundreds of children we serve.  Thanks from the bottom of our hearts for your love, prayers and kind support.

Sincerely in Christ,

Craig

Craig Bogard