This week’s resource on prison ministry includes materials and interviews from Koinonia House, which helps Christian ex-cons readjust to society. We asked for a testimony from one of Koinonia’s residents to share. This is Jon Bell’s story.
I have been in and out of prisons eight times, locked up for a total of 33 years. I came from a broken life, but now I am healed. For that I give glory to our Lord Jesus Christ, and I am grateful to the entire staff of Koinonia House and all the members of Willow Creek Community Church of DuPage, who adopted me and brought me out of the streets of hell and surrounded me at the dinner table with love and support.
I grew up on the West Side of Chicago. My mother drank a half-gallon of vodka every day, and when my stepfather got drunk, he would beat my mother so bad that he left his heel mark on her forehead. He broke her jaw, arms, and legs. Because me and my brother weren’t his, he would come home, search the house for us, and beat us black and blue–so bad that he wouldn’t let us go to school. During meals, me and my brother couldn’t eat until his kids got done because my stepfather wanted to make sure they had enough to eat.
When I turned 11, I ran away from home and began to use cocaine, weed, and alcohol. I snorted it, smoked it, and shot it up. There wasn’t a drug I didn’t use, including heroin. While living on the streets, I slept in backyards, stolen cars, and hallways. Once I walked around all day in zero-degree weather with no place to keep warm. At 2:00 in the morning I found an unlocked hallway to a three-story apartment building. So I wouldn’t get caught sleeping there, I took all the toys out of a toy box, crawled in, and closed the top.
I stole from both my family and friends to get dope. In retaliation for how my stepfather abused me, I would sneak back in the house when he got paid, go through his pants’ pockets, and steal all his money they had to live on. I was the lowest you could get.
I ate out of garbage cans and people’s gardens and stole from stores. I remember always trying to beat the rest of the homeless people to the garbage dumpster at 10:45 p.m., the time when leftovers were thrown out.
Twenty-seven years later, I was still doing drugs and going in and out of prisons. Having just been released from Cook County Jail after doing 60 days for a DUI case, I felt I deserved a couple of beers. I decided to go a bar that was just below my mother and stepfather’s apartment, where I hoped to see my mother. I wanted her to know just how sorry I was for what I did as a run-away child.
When I got there, I looked behind the bar and saw a banner that read, “All donations for Adriana Bell would be appreciated.” My mother. I asked the bartender what that meant and she told me, “Oh, she passed away a couple of hours ago.” I never got to apologize.
In 2001, two weeks into a 15-year sentence for possession of a stolen motor vehicle, I was diagnosed with liver cancer. The doctors didn’t think I would last more than two weeks. The only person I knew to contact was my ex-girlfriend, who with her three children had supported me during my past prison sentences. This time, I never heard back from them.
The prison chaplain who I worked for at the time as an inmate chapel clerk brought some outside Christian volunteers into the prison to pray for healing. I was surrounded by ten people praying for me. I remember this one lady in particular praying loud in tongues. When I came into prayer agreement with her, I felt myself lift off the floor. When her voice had lowered, I slowly lowered back to the floor. When I got to the floor, I felt this heavy burden lifted off of me. I felt a sense of comfort and peace, and I knew something had occurred within me through the Holy Spirit. I committed myself to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then I began chemotherapy treatment. After the fourth cycle, the doctor sent me out to have a PET Scan done. The results came back and showed that the cancer was gone. The Lord Jesus Christ had healed me!
Despite that, I still wanted to get out and do more drugs. I would lay in my cell and think about who I could get dope from, what body shops I could go to in hopes to sell stolen cars for drug money. But I didn’t have a place to go upon my release from prison, so I wrote an 85-year-old lady who knew me from my childhood, Ms. Bea Cutter. She told me to fill out an application to a place called Koinonia House. She said it was Christian-based and would change my life.
I applied and was accepted. But when I found out that it was a 15-month program I thought, “No way!” I planned on staying for just one day and then taking off.
On the day I was released, Oct. 29, 2008, I was met at the prison gate by the Koinonia House Resident Director, Willie Martinez, and my Spiritual Mentor, Brad Russell. When I arrived at the Koinonia House I was met by over 25 people from Willow Creek Community Church, which adopted me as a member.
I was overwhelmed with love and support from these people I didn’t even know. I remember how one little five-year-old girl at the house, Maggie, was too shy to give me a “Welcome Home” picture she drew for me. But Maggie’s parents were the first Sunday host family I spent the day with. After I had shared my testimony and everyone in the house was crying, Maggie, who also had tears in her eyes, went upstairs to her room and brought down the picture and whispered in my ear, “Welcome, Jon.”
I was so overtaken by their love and support for me that all my desire to leave was gone. God used these people to overtake me with their love. Now I want the new life that Christ set forth for me, to pick up my cross and follow him.
I am healed by Christ’s stripes,
Resident Jon L. Bell
Koinonia House of Wheaton
