“Living alone in this prison cell was really getting to me. Eleven days earlier I had been stabbed more than a dozen times by a fellow inmate, so they put me in here for my ‘protection.’ But who was going to protect me from the demons inside my head? I was despondent, frustrated, angry at the world and angry at myself for the mess I had made of my life. I just wanted to end it all. That was before I received the book, and before I came to know Gladys Aylward.” Ivan Romero, Christian
Ivan Miranda Romero is a former gang member and, in his own words, “small-time petty crook” looking at a possible life sentence for second-degree strong-arm robbery. When he first received the book, he glanced at the summary on the jacket then quickly dismissed it, tossing it into a bin in the corner of his cell where he kept his other books.
When you live alone in a prison cell, a good book can be your only companion. But Ivan had another use for his books. “It was several days later,” he explained. “I was doing pushups in my cell off two stacks of books. One stack didn’t feel right so I took off the top book. It was Gladys’
book.” That was the day Ivan opened the book for the first time. He noticed a ‘Christian Library International’ stamp with an address and an invitation to tell CLI how this book had affected his
life.
“I wondered,” he recalled, “how this book could possibly affect my life. Here I was living the life of a criminal. And from what I read on the book jacket here was Gladys, a humble, noble servant of God. But time was something that I had plenty of. So I read the book.”
The book was The Gladys Aylward Story from the Heroes of the Faith series. It recounts Gladys’ incredible and inspirational life, beginning with her early years as a humble parlor maid serving the wealthy in turn-of-the-century England, to her courageous missionary journey through China in the days leading up to World War II. Her life’s journey couldn’t be more different from Ivan’s.
Abused as a child, Ivan turned to drugs, which predictably led to his life of crime. “I’ve been in and out of the prison system for the past 20 years,” he recounted. “Now they want to give me 25 to life. I contemplated suicide. I thought, why wait around here till I’m 60 or 70 when I can hang myself from an air vent. Then some kid, 19 years old and facing a murder
charge, shows up at my cell door at the precise moment that I’m planning my early demise. He offers me a piece of his cornbread. So instead of hanging myself, I ate cornbread with my new
friend. That was God buying me time until Gladys arrived.”
Today, Ivan is at peace with himself and with his life behind bars. “Gladys, against all odds, beat the odds,” he said. “God’s plan for her was different than her plan, but it worked out better than Gladys imagined. As for me, I may be spending the rest of my life in this place or maybe the Lord will take me out of here in a few years. But it doesn’t really matter anymore. Thanks to CLI I got to know Gladys and I learned so much from her life. I used to think Gladys and I had nothing in common. She lived a hundred years ago on the other side of the world. And me, I live in this little cell. But Gladys and me, we have something in common now. We both know Jesus.”
