© 2021 Michael Hill
© 2021 The Urantia Book Fellowship
by Michael Hill
The Urantia Book Fellowship’s very successful Pipeline of Light outreach includes providing books for the Inmate Correspondence Program (ICP),
which responds to inmates writing the Fellowship asking for a book or desiring to have someone to talk to about the book.
The ICP team is made up of five volunteers who respond to inmate letters: Dick Bain, Joy Brandt (from Spanish inmates), Don Guimond, Michael Hill, and Mike Schneider. This is a truly rewarding service, and sometimes great spiritual pen pal relationships begin with the inmates which are enormously rewarding to us.
In 2020, we received over 300 letters from inmates and sent 300 books out to them (291 in English, eight in Spanish, and one in Russian). We’ve sent books to 136 prisons across the country. In seventeen of them more than a dozen individual inmates have received books, while to a couple institutions we’ve sent over thirty books!
Here’s a sample of one of the great letters we received in 2020:
Dear Urantia Book Fellowship,
My name is XXXX. I am currently incarcerated in Orange County Main Jail in California.
I express my deep heartfelt gratitude for forwarding my brother YYYY’s request for the Urantia Book to Michael Hill, in Alsea, OR. Michael sent YYYY a book with a booklet [When Things Go Wrong] and a wonderful letter.
I don’t know how the “free” copies of The Urantia Book are paid for, but I suspect you (The Fellowship) are involved to a large extent. I want you to know that because of your loving generosity I have seen many lives that were in the depths of despair be lifted to the sublime faith-knowledge of being a son of God. It is the most beautiful, gratifying, and humbling experience of my life. It would not have been possible without the love and generosity of you and all involved in sending so many “free” copies of The Urantia Book. I want you to know of, and share in the joy and satisfaction in knowing of the great effect you have had in many lives.
Although gratitude is the strongest word I can think of to express my thankfulness to you, it isn’t nearly strong enough to express the feelings in my heart toward you!
Sincerely,
Your eternal brother,
XXXX
It is the most beautiful, gratifying, and humbling experience of my life.