We also prepare guidelines to encourage and direct those serving the institutionalized. For the past several years we have concentrated on placing Bibles and Bible correspondence courses for prisoners into jails and penitentiaries across the United States and Canada. We now have nine correspondence courses in print. More courses are in various stages of preparation. In the last biennium, we placed approximately 100,000 Bibles and tens of thousands each of the various correspondence courses.
Funding comes from special donations-none comes out of congregational mission offerings.
The materials must be sent to prisons and penitentiaries free since government funds dare not be spent on religious materials. How wonderful that God made it possible for thousands upon thousands of prisoners to study Lutheran biblical teaching based upon God's Word. Nearly 10,000 inmates are in our computer data bank. Almost 1,000 chaplains are actively using our materials. Almost 300,000 self study courses have been mailed since the program began in 1995.