"The Important Thing is To Forgive"

As a Prison Fellowship El Salvador volunteer for the past six years, Isabel had heard many stories of gang violence and gruesome murders, but her son was a good boy who attended church and a weekly prayer group. He had resisted the pervasive gangs in his neighbourhood, whose deadly reach extended beyond the impoverished, crime-ridden Lourdes, Colón, where he lived, all the way to the United States.

After she arrived at the hospital, the reality of the situation became all too apparent. Her son had not survived his gunshot wounds. He was dead at only 23 years old. The police would investigate, but like most gang killings, it would go unsolved. The “why‘s”and the “who‘s”would never be answered. Even if there were witnesses, few would testify against a gang member. Isabel would return home with only speculations to fill her questioning mind. One of the established gangs had asked her son to sell drugs for them and he had refused. Perhaps they killed him because they thought he was working for the rival gang. Most likely, Isabel will never know. 

Most of the prisoners Isabel had regularly visited over the past six years were gang members who themselves had killed and injured many others. With the pain of her son‘s murder still so fresh, could she continue to visit them? Could she still have compassion for such prisoners after losing her precious boy?
Yet, just four days after her son‘s murder, Isabel did not hesitate to go back into the prisons. “As long as God permits me, I‘ll volunteer in the prisons,” she explains. “Yes, there are bad people there, but there are good people as well. Many prisoners are just like children, they just need someone to care for them.”

Over time, Isabel had become close to many of the young men she visits in the prison. So much so that she could not tell them of her son‘s death for fear they would seek retribution by killing members of the gang they might suspect were responsible. It is not uncommon for gang members to order killings from inside the prison and she did not want others to die. “The important thing is to forgive,” she says. “Now I know firsthand the destruction gang violence can cause and it just makes me more eager to show them that the answer is in forgiveness and reconciliation - not continuing the cycle of killing.”

Isabel‘s sublime lesson of love and forgiveness could not be more needed in the prisons and communities of El Salvador. Police estimate that there are more than 20,000 gang members in the country and hundreds are killed or wounded by gang violence each year. Gangs have grown dramatically since the civil war in the 1980s that killed 70,000 Salvadorians and left the economy in a shambles. With revenge as one of the primary motives in the gang killings, each murder spurs several more, with no end in sight.

Isabel and the other PF volunteers visit the prisoners regularly, bringing them wood and other materials so they can produce crafts, and sharing the word of God with them. “When we don‘t go, I feel empty,” she says, “I wonder how they‘re doing, what they‘re doing.

Even now, with her pain still so raw and intense, Isabel shows another way, the path of forgiveness, by following Jesus‘ example of loving those who sought Him harm. Prisoners may instinctively sense that she speaks from experience, but Isabel keeps the extent to which she herself has shown such forgiveness from them. “I am here with Prison Fellowship El Salvador and I will continue to serve as long as God gives me the opportunity,” she says. If you have the love of God, you have everything.” A truth she is perhaps now more able to convey to the prisoners than ever before.