Newsletter

April 2025 Newletter

April 2025 Newsletter

I’ll start with an apology for my taking so long to report our progress with Bibles 4 Change. No excuses, but we’ve been really overwhelmed with all of the work involved with the Seminary program, Paid in Full California. It’s hard to believe, but our freshman class is about to finish it’s first year! We’re actually in the process of vetting our second cohort which will start classes in late August. God’s blessings on this work are nothing short of amazing. We’ve revamped our website, so for more information about PIFC, please visit our website:

www.paidinfullcalifornia.org

One of the other off-shoots of the Seminary program involves the Spanish congregation at Mule Creek. On both the D and E yards, they were relegated to small conference rooms to conduct their Sunday worship services. They would each have 12 to 15 guys in them each Sunday with no room for growth because the crowding was uncomfortable. Our Seminary Professor/Facilitator, Juan Gonzales, was approached by the Spanish students about this so we went to the CRM at the prison and negotiated the use of the full chapel on the E yard for 2 hours on Friday nights. After about 6 weeks, the congregation now has around 65 guys in eager attendance, every week! The services are lively and all in untranslated Spanish but you can sure feel the presence of the Lord, even if you don’t understand what is being said! God has worked miracles in this and many souls have come to Christ as a result!

______________________________

I’ve talked, over the years, about the program we developed call “Christian Anger Management Project “(CAMP). It’s a 30 week course based upon what God’s word says about anger. We just graduated our 6th class in Folsom Prison and are in the late stages of our 3rd class at Mule Creek. There are still several sessions being conducted in prisons in the Houston, Texas area. God has truly blessed this work and its growing popularity and implementation shows this.

God’s grace on the CAMP program further manifests itself on the latest development. The publisher of our workbook “The Anger Workbook” by Drs. Les Carter and the late Frank Minirth, was unwilling to translate this book into Spanish. They just didn’t see a strong enough demand for it. They did agree, however, to license us to do it for a very modest loyalty fee. Our daughter, Kendra Morales, one of our B4C board members, took on the project and got it done! We made a spiral-bound copy of the book and I took it into Mule Creek and had a couple of our Spanish Seminary students edit it. Remarkably, they made very few changes to the translated copy. Once again, God’s hand was and is all over this. Our final stage, was to produce 5 copies of the book and send it to the publisher, HarperCollins, for final review. This was done about a week ago, so we’re just waiting for them to finish.

Back several years ago, at the onset of the CAMP curriculum, we developed a Facilitator’s binder to guide people as to how our classes should be conducted and how the 30-week timeline should be met. We’ve also translated that binder into Spanish, into the spiral-bound format. We are expecting to begin our first Spanish CAMP class to start sometime in June. It will be led by 2 of our Seminary students as a part of their practicum requirements for their degree program.

It has truly been a blessing for me and the rest of our leadership team to watch God work in this environment. One of the main principles driving the ministry of Paid in Full California is that we’re all about changing the moral culture in this and other prisons in California. With a focus on God and furthering His kingdom, the change has become evident every day. Our faith in this program is tested continually with the finances involved. The numbers are pretty staggering but we know that God did not bring us this far to wash us out!!

God bless you all for your continued, prayerful support.

Bob Morris

God Bless - Bob

May 2023 - Newsletter

Sharon and I just got back from what we called a working vacation. We spent 3 days in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at Angola Prison as I described in my last newsletter. We spent 2 days before the event in the French Quarter in New Orleans. We spent 2 days after the event in Natchez Miss, and then drove down through the center of Mississippi, across the bridge over the Pontchartrain back to New Orleans. We had some really enjoyable vacation days just doing some Bucket-list things.

It was a wonderful time witnessing all of the work that Burl Cain’s organization is doing there, as well as in Mississippi. We were also able to plant the seeds of getting our Christian Anger Management course and our Written in Red curriculum started in both Louisiana and in Mississippi. A couple of years ago Mr. Cain left Angola to become the Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, but his home is still in Louisiana, so he’s still active there.

Angola has had a beautiful Seminary complex built right in the middle of the prison, attached to their historic main chapel. It is a very impressive operation and they are in the process of graduating a full class every year now thanks to the added capacity this affords.

This trip has re-ignited my interest in working on getting a Seminary in a prison here in California. As some of you may know, when I first heard about Brother Cain’s successes in Louisiana several years ago, I worked some on getting the concept going in California but I met with very tepid interest in the CDCR who, at the time labeled it as nearly impossible, so I backed away from it. But now, my friend Randy Haskins with New Beginnings in Placerville and I have begun to tag-team the process here. We’ve been encouraged, not only by Burl Cain’s organization, but also because we believe the climate for the possibility of this in California is changing. The CDCR has announced, and begun funding, a complete ‘change-of-mission’ for San Quintin prison here in the North to what they call a ‘Rehabilitation Facility’. We believe this aligns itself to what we are trying to do here.

All of this is really exciting to me! In fact, Mr. Cain’s ministry ‘Prison Seminary Foundation’ is having their annual conference in Memphis, Tn. at the end of this month and Randy and I are set to attend (5/31 – 6/2).

So – a lot of water has to go under the bridge, but it’s exciting to be a part of this process – more to come!

There are new developments in Texas as well. The first is that both of our courses are receiving great reviews from both the facilitators and the inmates. This is very exciting to us, especially since we can’t be there in person to watch over how they are conducted. God has really blessed us with this endeavor.

And second, Brother Anderson’s ministry (Epiphany Life Change) has now taken over the rest of Texas. He has begun making contact with all of the prison Chaplains to his north explaining their mission and scope of their work. He said they’ve specifically listed CAMP and WIR as a part of their curriculum so we need to be prepared for a big increase in demand for our courses. God has always told us that he will provide what we need, when we need it, so we will trust in that!

For the record, it’s important that all of you, our donors, understand that our philosophy remains the same regarding spending B4C funds – it’s always weighed against how many Bibles it costs us to do something and these trips are no different. Since we have not yet made this Seminary in Prisons a formal part of our ministry, we only paid for our rental car for the New Orleans trip. Our flights, hotel rooms and meals we covered ourselves. The Memphis trip is the same – we’re not spending B4C money on any of it.

If any of you want more information on Burl Cains foundation – look up “Prison Seminary Foundation”. You’ll be guided to other websites from there. And as always, for more information on our ministry – Bibles4change.org

Thank you and God bless you all for your continued and ever-faithful support.

Bob

Newsletter – December 2021

Well, we’ve about made it through another tough year! God has truly blessed our country in many ways, but He’s sure testing our faith with all that’s going on in our government and our economy. We just have to remember who’s in charge. It’s our Father and creator – not our government!!

CAMP (our Christian Anger Management Project) course is still rolling along nicely. We have a class going in Folsom Prison on Tuesday nights that is currently in week 14 of 30 weeks. This is our 3rd class at that facility. Also, we’ve begun a class at Mule Creek on Wednesday nights, currently in week 3.

It looks as though we are on pace to begin our work in 3 prisons in the Houston area early in 2022. Of course, we will keep you posted as that work begins. The volunteer structure is all in place and ready to go. All we’re waiting on now is for Texas Dept. of Corrections to open back up for programming.

We also have a contact now near Wichita, Kansas. A close compadre that used to help us conduct the CAMP class here in Folsom has moved to Kansas to be closer to family. He has begun the slow and arduous process of getting cleared to go into a couple of prisons there. Once he’s in, he said he will be working to establish a CAMP class there. As always, all of this will be done in God’s timing and not our own.

Our “Written in Red” project is still being developed. Matthew, Mark and John are in final draft stage, which means we’ll go back through it one more time to fix format, spelling and continuity issues. We’ll go there as soon as we finish Luke, which is about ¾ complete. We are looking forward to rolling this out in the first quarter of 2022, once again, according to God’s timing.

The pandemic has really altered our goals and trajectory in terms of our Mainstay, study Bible distribution. We simply aren’t getting the requests for Bibles, undoubtedly because programming inside prisons in most States has been drastically reduced if not curtailed completely. Our plan is, in January, to begin making contact with our Chaplains in all 13 States that we’ve worked with in the past, pre-Covid. We know God will direct us in that effort.

We have actually re-directed those Bible distribution efforts, however, to focus on distributing Bibles to evacuation sites for our many wildfires here in Northern California. For details about this part of our ministry, please visit our website as shown below.

And speaking of our website, we’ve made a few upgrades to give our supporters access to information on all of our projects, so please, take a look at it when you get a chance. Also, we are always open to corrections and upgrades that all of you may see on the site. You won’t hurt our feelings to be critical!

As always, we truly thank all of you that support us, both in your prayers and financially! God has really blessed us in this ministry, and that includes all of you – Thank you.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Bob

Newsletter – August 2020

I know that it’s been awhile since my last letter, but as all of you can imagine the Covid-19 debacle has really slammed on the brakes for programming inside prisons across the country. By virtue of this, we’ve shifted gears in our ministry to begin cleaning up our media

presence/tools along with refining the Christian Anger Management Project (CAMP) package.

Our Website – If any of you have looked at our website of late you may have found it a little messy. We’re making significant changes on nearly every page and in the course of doing this we published it so that it wouldn’t be missing completely. But now we are about done with the upgrades. Naturally, a website should always be dynamic, a work in progress, so that you all see something new every time you visit. We’re hoping you’ll find it more interesting and informative as time goes by. Please take a look at our site when you can, and as always, we are open to constructive criticism – what you think matters to us!

Our Facebook page – Not only have we changed our image on our Facebook page, we have also begun to link our page to our website. Our goal is to inspire interest in others to get involved in prison ministries. We want to encourage Churches to begin prison ministries if they are not already involved. It’s important that people know that they can get involved in prison ministry without ever having to go inside a prison. We’ve developed a tab on the website giving them ideas as to how they can do this.

We believe all Christians should be taking advantage of all this isolation down time to prepare for getting back to God’s work. This not only includes prison ministry but also to our church work. A simple but great question for you to ask your pastor-

“What can I do, right now, to help the church hit-the-ground-running once we do open back up?”

Awhile back I mentioned in a Newsletter that we sent some Bibles up to a Pastor in Paradise to distribute to his congregants and to anyone else that wanted one. He distributed all 80 Bibles in a little over 2 hours. The Lord has placed on my heart that we do that again for these big fires we experiencing now. So that is what we will be doing. Tomorrow, Aug 22, I’ll be headed down to Vacaville to meet up with a Pastor down there to distribute what we can there and then see where we are called to go from there. Probably either Loyalton or Santa Cruz. Please keep this work in your prayers. Take a look in the ‘Projects’ tab on our website for more information on this work.

We thank you all for hanging in there with us during these crazy times. Your gifts to us are simply helping us to be ready when God calls an end to all of this political absurdity and to the fires! Please keep us in your prayers.

Bob

May 2020 Newsletter

You may recall that in my last newsletter I expressed concern over the fact that our requests for Bibles over the last couple of months had really dropped off.

In fact, the whole first quarter of this year has been near zero. As you might imagine, I’ve been pretty frustrated with all of this.

I also mentioned a reminder as to our submitting our Christian Anger Management course to a group in South Texas for use in the 5 prisons around Houston.

Then, this Coronavirus craziness began so all of our prison work ground to a halt. To be honest, I began to question God in all of this. But in His own, miraculous way He reminded me that He was in charge and that His timing would always prevail, not mine. He’s also helped me to understand that this pandemic is a “Shot across the bow” to America. We’ve systematically taken God out of most everything in America. We take being the most powerful and richest country in the world as something that we accomplished and that He had no part in it. God has shown us with this fiasco that in the blink of an eye He can bring mighty America and all the world to its knees without a fight! GOD IS TRULY IN CHARGE AND ALWAYS WILL BE!! And all of us Christians need to step up and be counted. It’s time to get back to church! We as a nation need to recognize that without Him we will fail! We’re not as big as we think we are.

Enough preaching. I know all of you understand this for what it really is.

Back to Bibles 4 Change – I mentioned earlier my frustration with not hearing anything back on the informational packages I sent to various places regarding our Christian Anger Management Project, what we call CAMP. Last week I got a call from my guy in Houston. He apologized for taking so long for getting back to me on this program but his reasons were pretty powerful. Back in February he submitted our program to the Department of Corrections for the State of Texas in Austin. He was calling me to say that we have just been approved for distribution of the course for every prison in Texas! WOW!

God was working all along for us! He got our course approved in record time because He wants it to grow in other places! He dramatically slowed the demand for Bibles because he wanted us to build our coffers for all of the expenses we would encounter with this new demand for CAMP! Once again, He has humbled impatient Bob about who is in charge and who’s timing is the best.

Please, please, please keep us in your prayers for all of this, folks. This is really a big deal for B4C! We’re going to need your support in every way, more than ever now.

We sincerely thank you for all of your undying support!

Bob

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

April 2025 Newletter

Newsletter – December 2021

Newsletter – August 2020

May 2020 Newsletter