The LOCK Ministry: Newsletter Issue 5

The LOCK Ministry: Newsletter Issue 5 (7/30/2021)

The LOCK Ministry / Potter’s Hands Prison Ministries

LOCK Community Launch

When future King David was chased by King Saul, he found a refuge at a place called the Cave of Adullam. 1 Samuel 22:1-2 writes, “David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. So when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So he became captain over them. And there were about four hundred men with him.”

The Cave of Adullam was not only a refuge for those in distress, in debt, and discontented, but it became a lifeline for David. Even after David became the king of the Unified Kingdom of Israel, many fighters from the Cave of Adullam served the country with King David. We had an event called the LOCK Community Launch from 4:00 PM on June 27(Sunday), 2021. Dr. Hugh Chung, a trauma surgeon and one of the directors of The LOCK Ministry led the praising, and Dr. Kon Yang, another director of The LOCK Ministry and professor of Gateway Seminary, gave an encouraging message, “Out of Darkness into His Marvelous Light” from 1 Peter 2:9- 10.

Pastor Key Han followed with the ministry report, and five individuals provided their testimonies on the impact of The LOCK Ministry in their lives. Pastor Choongkyo Lee closed the meeting with benediction. We also shared a meal and enjoyed fellowship. While the space was quite limited, many people joined with great expectations. We pray that the LOCK Community may be a driving force for the future of The LOCK Ministry.

Inside this issue

LOCK Community Launch........................1
LOVE Ministry.....................................................2
Jail/Prison Visit..................................................2
LEARN Ministry.................................................2
P1 PROJECT.........................................................2
Spanish P1 PROJECT.....................................3
LIVE Ministry......................................................4
New Office...........................................................4
Potter's Hands Project.................................4
On-Line Resources.........................................5
LOCK Community...........................................6

LOVE Ministry - Love Of Christ’s Kingdom

Jail/Prison Visitations

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, jail/ prison visits were suspended for more than a year. On April 10 this year, however, jail/prison visits were resumed with some restrictions. First, prison visits were limited to two hours at a time, and jail visits to 30 minutes. Each inmate was allowed to have 2 visits a month. Even jail visits now require reservations of at least 20 hours in advance. We used to visit inmates at the Orange County jails every Saturday without reservations. Most of the time, we chose inmates with Korean last names randomly, and sometimes we were denied visits by the inmates. There were some inmates who do not want to meet Christians.

Most of the time, however, the reasons for rejections were more to protect their opportunity to meet their family members or friends, because every inmate was allowed to have only one visit a day, even then. But now, as only two visits are allowed per month, we need to be very careful not to block their valuable privilege to meet their loved ones. Nothing has been changed, however, in our desire to use every opportunity given to us to reach out for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We expect that our old routine of making random visits to the jail inmates may return in time. During the last 6 months, we mailed out 192 devotional booklets(Living Life-90, Today-102) and a number of Bibles to the inmates who requested then. As the Spanish P1 PROJECT has been expanding, we have been sending out Spanish Bibles as well.

LEARN Ministry- Learn on Christ’s Kingdom

P1 PROJECT

The P1 PROJECT became the flag ship of our ministry. P1 stands for Psalm chapter 1, which says, “Blessed is the one…...whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.” (Psalm 1:1,2) The Bible also says that “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)“ As we truly believe in the power of the Word of God, we have been promoting the writing of Scriptures by paying money to those who participate in the P1 PROJECT.

The picture shows the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy sent by brother C from Norco State Prison. It is a total of 74 chapters which were sent to us just 5 days apart. He is one of the fastest performers of the P1 PROJECT. He is 34 years old and serving an 8 years of prison term. He had never been in close contact with his parents, and was raised by his grandmother briefly. He learned street life early on, and has been in and out juvenile halls and jails since he was only 13 years old.

After he started the P1 PROJECT, however, there has been steady changes in his thoughts, and we believe that the Word of God is molding his life from the inside out. At the start of this year, we had about 100 P1 PROJECT participants, but the number doubled in six months. We have now over 200 P1 PROJECT participants, within 17 state prisons, Orange County jails, LA County jails, and San Bernardino jails.

The chart shows the P1 PROJECT participants for California State prisons and jails as of the end of June, 2021. The obvious first place is the CRC at Norco. Brother K started spreading the news of the P1 PROJECT approximately one year ago. He himself was not an active participant of the P1 PROJECT, but later realized the speed of expansion at the Norco facility, and decided later to participate in the very project he told so many about. We need to understand that each prison facility houses more than 2 to 3 thousand inmates, and we are just scratching the surface. California State carries more than 100,000 that are incarcerated, and we have touched 0.2% of the potential population. Our ministry fields are wide open and we need to pray for more harvesters.

Spanish P1 PROJECT

The largest ethnic population in California’s jails/prisons is the Hispanic. Most of them still prefer speaking Spanish to English. You will find that many workers at the jail/prison facilities are bilingual-English and Spanish. Recent statistics show that 44% of prison inmates and 41% of jail inmates speak Spanish and 41% in jail population do. Moreover, many do not understand English well. We learned that many P1 PROJECT participants prefer reading the Bible in Spanish rather than in English.

Until a few months ago, we had to turn away P1 PROJECT applicants who can only write in Spanish since we did not have any volunteers who could serve that language group. A few months ago, though, God sent us a volunteer who could this population. Brother Pablo Kim immigrated into Argentina when he was 10 years old, and grew up there to become a CPA. He speaks Spanish better than Korean. He moved with his family to the United States about 20 years ago, and joined our team of volunteers for the P1 PROJECT. Now we have a growing number of P1 PROJECT Spanish participants enjoying the P1 PROJECT in their mother 3 tongue. The picture above shows the P1 PROJECT instructions in English and Spanish.

LIVE Ministry - Live Out Christ’s Kingdom

New Office

The Lord provided us with a new office on February 1 this year. It is located in the City of Brea. Our office is close to the Imperial Highway and the surroundings are quiet and comfortable. The main reason we needed an office was to run the embroidery machine to operate the Potter’s Hands Project. We needed a flex office which allows light manufacturing based on the city ordinance. The office space became quite useful for our ministry needs. In the beginning, Ambassador Church in Anaheim was gracious to allow us to use one of their meeting rooms for our Saturday ministry meetings. Before the COVID-19 shutdown, our ministry team met after our jail visits at the church to discuss the results of the visits and had time for prayer. It is a special blessing to have our own office space now to conduct meetings at anytime. The space has a large common area and three individual offices. We have been conducting counselling sessions, and meetings with family members of those we serve.

Potter’s Hands Project

The embroidery machine arrived right after we opened our office. The machine we purchased is an MT-1502 of the Ricoma International Corporation. The “15” of MT-1502 means that the machine has 15 thread spools, and “02” means that the machine has two heads. The equipment can run two identical embroideries at the same time, and each head can handle 15 different threads. Ricoma provided initial training for the machine operations, and we are now ready to handle almost any custom embroidery needs after many practice runs. The Pastors’ Computer Study Group (목정연) became the first customer of our Potter’s Hands Project. They visited our office to celebrate our launch of the Potter’s Hands Project with us. We are thankful for their prayers and generous donations.

Each of the hats they are wearing in the picture has a logo of the Pastors’ Computer Study group. We can handle various custom embroideries for hats, shirts, towels, aprons, etc. We have since then fulfilled a few orders from local customers and those from Michigan and Ohio. LIVE Ministry—Live Out Christ’s Kingdom New Office Potter’s Hands Project 5 We pray for many more new customers and expansion of the business. But the most important objective of the Potter’s Hands Project is to help those coming out of incarceration with job training and business opportunities. In the Bible, God is described as a Potter who may mold us into His likeness. “Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel!” (Jeremiah 18:6)

It is our prayer that many people out of incarceration become molded in God’s hands as they go through the Potter’s Hands Project. We all know that lack of decent job opportunities is one of the main reasons for high recidivism. We need to expand the customer base of the Potter’s Hands Project, as well as pinpointing good candidates who will become beneficiaries of the Potter’s Hands Project, as they get trained and start their own businesses.

Online Resources

The main website representing our ministry is www.thelockministry.org. Brother Woomin Chung volunteered to create the website when we launched our ministry two and half years ago. He has been continuously serving as a manager of our website. The main website is essential to learning about our ministry and events, and it provided a mechanism for volunteering and donations for the ministry.

To respond to the explosive growth of the social media, we also launched connections to Facebook and Instagram. Brother Jason Menjivar has been serving as a manager of both social media needs for our ministry, in addition to providing professional level support of picture and video needs.

As we started the Potter’s Hands Project, we are in dire need of a commercial website which can handle individual and bulk orders from the public. Brother Seongmin Jo resides in the Michigan area, but he volunteered to start our new website www.pottershandsproject.com. Now anyone can come to this website and select our product with their own design, and pay for the order online anytime. In turn, we receive the order, finish the embroidery, and ship it out to customer locations smoothly. We thank God for these volunteers who have started and also have been managing the online resources.

We also thank God for Sister Anne Park who volunteered to organize and help all these online resources work together seamlessly. Anne was the Executive Director of Jacob’s Well which is a non-profit organization similar to ours and has been involved in managing various online resources. We are praying that our Online resource team will be able to continue the work together fruitfully.

LOCK Community

We are praying that the LOCK Community Launch on June 27 was the first of many meetings to come. The main program of the launch was testimonies by five individuals. We would like to thank Brother Dustin who drove 3 and half hours from Santa Maria to participate in the event. We also want to thank Minister Peter from All Nations Jesus Church in Garden Grove, who led the testimony sessions. Minister Peter will be ordained on August 29 this year as a Southern Baptist pastor. Brothers Jayson, Danny and Hyun were not only providers of moving testimonies at the launch, but also they have been solid financial supporters of The LOCK Ministry. We thank God for their involvement in our ministry.

We dream that one day the future leaders of The LOCK Ministry will come directly out of the LOCK Community and that the majority of volunteers and financial support will also come out of the LOCK Community as well. So that this ministry can become self-sufficient and self-empowering, and those being served will be equipped by the very ones who once walked in their shoes. We long to see God glorified through the collaboration between this new LOCK Community and The LOCK Ministry, and we ask for your continued prayers, as He is our ultimate Provider.

All P1 PROJECT participants will be invited to join the LOCK Community and other people who have been cared for by our ministry will also be invited. We envision that the LOCK Community may become the driving force of The LOCK Ministry. They have received benefits from the ministry, and it makes great sense for them to support the ministry. As the community of the Cave of the Adullam did for King David, each participant of the LOCK Community will provide a comfortable place to share and exchange loving support and encouragement while serving The LOCK Ministry.

Prayer Requests

1. Many P1 PROJECT participants may be transformed by the power of the Word of God and experience the new beginning.

2. For the volunteers and financial supports to continue to expand the P1 PROJECT.

3. For the expansion of the Potter’s Hands Project so that we may be able to train those coming out of incarceration and support them to start their own businesses.

4. For strong bond among the LOCK Community members, and it may become the driving force of The LOCK Ministry