Set free and setting others free
Former convict Antonio Rodríguez Ortiz was awarded the Bronze Medal for Penitentiary Social Merit by a delegate of the Government of Spain in Andalusia on 23 September.
Antonio was sent to prison in the 1980s for armed robbery, drug trafficking and other crimes. “I went so far as to use paper from the Gideons New Testaments to smoke marijuana...” he says. But in prison Antonio heard the gospel for the first time and in February 1988 gave his life to Christ. Soon he was sharing Jesus with other prisoners.
“Ten years ago we tasked Antonio with developing teams for ministry in the 17 prisons in Andalusia, Spain,” explains ECM’s Spanish field leader Francis Arjona. “In 2006 there were only ten people doing prison ministry. Now it has reached all the prisons and around 3,200 prisoners each week. In the last ten years, 484 people have been baptised.”
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