They may be the most neglected group of people living in Taiwan: foreign inmates serving prison sentences here.
Locked behind bars, these inmates are the loneliest individuals of all. Most of their families are so far away that many never have had any family visits; most of them are allowed to place outgoing phone calls twice a year. Some may be challenged by language barriers.
PHOTO: CHANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Fortunately for these inmates, for 11 consecutive years, a group of Christians have played Santa Claus to shower them with gifts and love.
Taipei Prison, which is located in Guishan, Taoyuan County, houses approximately 140 foreign inmates, all of them men, from 18 countries. The majority are from Southeast Asia, while the rest are from Northeast Asia, Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Many inmates are imprisoned for drug-related violations.
The days leading up to the Lunar New Year are always the busiest time for the prison, as families and relatives of local inmates flock in to bring food and send their greetings to their loved ones. The usual half-hour visits are cut down to 15 minutes due to the heavy flow of visitors.
However, on the important occasions that matter the most to foreign inmates, no loved ones are around to do the same for them.
Such inmates desperately need contacts with the outside world, and to be given an assurance that someone out there knows about their existence and care about them.
The Lighthouse Ministry, which is run by several English-speaking Christian churches in Taipei, has just been doing that. In a weekly bible study class, counseling sessions and an annual Christmas party, volunteers deliver one clear message to the foreign inmates: that they are loved.
"When I first got involved with this ministry and visiting foreign inmates, many of them burst into tears because no one had ever visited them before," said Gwen "Sunny" Bajoras, a long-term correctional counselor.
Bajoras, an American who has lived in Taiwan for over 20 years, speaks fluent Mandarin.
For the past seven years, Bajoras has been leading a weekly bible study and providing counseling sessions for foreign inmates. Bajoras, a volunteer, is highly regarded by prison officials as well as the inmates themselves.
Numerous times in her ministry, Bajoras has witnessed how the ministry and the Christian faith transform the lives of many foreign inmates.
"There was one inmate from Southeast Asia who had an attitude problem during my first visit, where at one point he was daring me," Bajoras said. "For a while after that I refused to pay him another visit. Then, once he became a Christian, he was a transformed man. He is now back home and thinking seriously about initiating a prison ministry for foreign inmates in his home country."
The Lighthouse Ministry began in 1990, when a pastor of an English-speaking church on Yangmingshan was approached by a foreign family whose son was imprisoned in Taipei Prison.
"This family asked the pastor to help visit their son in prison," said Jon Brantingham, one of the earliest Light House Ministry volunteers. "Later, through the opportunity for ministry presented through the visit to one particular foreign inmate, many others were discovered."
Brantingham is a successful American businessman and a strong Christian who spent more than a decade living in Taiwan. Like Bajoras, Brantingham's fluency in Mandarin always manages to impress the crowd.
Although he no longer lives in Taiwan, Brantingham flew in this month to organize the annual Christmas party for foreign inmates at the Taipei Prison.
This year, the party was held on Dec. 17. A variety of food was prepared to cater to the varying appetites of the inmates.
On Thursday, volunteers from several English-speaking churches assembled at Oasis Christian Fellowship in Tianmu to pack more than a hundred personalized "goodie bags" for the inmates.
Each huge red plastic bag, labeled individually with an inmate's name and identification number, contained goodies such as copies of English-language news magazines and English novels, a bottle of body lotion, coffee, a toothbrush and soap.
"Could you help me find this inmate by this name and this number, and put this bar of soap in his bag? His skin is very dry," asked Bajoras, passing a bar of soap to another volunteer.
According to Brantingham, the ministry itself has a small budget and is sponsored by the participating churches.
"Churches such as the Taipei International Church, Oasis Christian Fellowship and Friendship Presbyterian Church have supplied both manpower and donations," Brantingham said. "During the Christmas seasons, some churches have special offerings for the Christmas party."
On the day of the Christmas party, over 80 Christian volunteers, many of them foreigners, arrived at the prison to set up a feast for the foreign inmates.
Present were a group of Catholic nuns from Europe and Japan, who brought in their homemade foods for the inmates whom they frequently visit.
Thai and Indonesian missionaries offered ethnic delicacies for the inmates involved in their ministries.
Representatives from the trade and economics offices of a Southeast Asian country and a European country also made appearances and brought with them gifts to show their cares for the inmates, especially those who were their compatriots.
Six long tables were barely enough to hold the overflowing amount of food. On one side of the room were Chinese dishes, including Cantonese-style roast duck and pork; on the other were Western-style food such as fried chicken, mashed potatoes and a stack of 90 boxes of large pizzas.
Trays of sushi, donuts and cakes and drinks such as soda, tea and coffee were also served.
After the warden gave a word of encouragement and a pastor offered a prayer, the Christmas feast officially began. Inmates excitedly got in line to receive their favorite foods from volunteers.
Upon seeing the amount of food -- enough to feed an entire army -- one would think there would have been a lot of leftovers. However, as if a tornado had passed through the tables, within the next two hours every single dish was wiped out.
Several inmates stood up to sing songs of praise and read Bible verses out loud. The smiles on their faces said it all.
"It is sobering to see the same guys year after year," Brantingham said. "It just hits home how long they've been in here."
Leaving the prison, and looking up the concrete walls and barbed wires, one could not help but wonder if these foreign inmates would ever get out.
Maybe it is what faith offers to these inmates -- a sense of hope that one day, they may go beyond these walls and be reunited with their loved ones in their homelands.
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