Mary's Lamb Goes to Prison

Mary’s Lamb Goes To Prison (as sent to the the prison fellowship list of Prison Ministries)

Hello everyone. Someone must have signed me up for this group! Thank you. I've prayed about this and God is so great about leading me to the right people to make things work for His good. Please allow me to introduce myself.
My name is LeFerna, and I am the author of "The Secret of Yahweh!" a children's novel designed to be given away and shared eleven times so that each book will create twelve new disciples for Christ. The amazing thing about this children's book is that adults have been the main readers so far, and they are sending me some of the most heart-warming emails thanking me for renewing their faith in the Bible as God's Word, reminding them of their own childhood while teaching them things they never knew. When I asked what age group they plan to give their book to, it is always another adult that they know who can benefit from the book, calling it an easy guide to Christianity and what it should mean to Americans. This is wonderful! “Being as little children” in this way. I know this is God’s doing and not mine at all. He gives me visions and ideas and I try my best to fulfill them, using every gift or talent he has ever given me. I am still in awe and at the “why me?” stage, but I am starting to understand more as I study the unchurched families and the need for Christian curriculum in our schools today. These are two huge problems in the USA today. Our children are our future. They are also the ones growing up to face confusion and end up being incarcerated or worse. Killed before they get to know Jesus.
I am not spamming this list as I do not plan to "sell" this book to prisons. After reading the rest of my post, see if you don’t agree with me that it is God’s will that we give this book to as many people as we can. And why I need your help and guidance for a project of this magnitude.
Richard Blake, reviewed this book, (I share his review below) and his words first brought me tears, as I have never written a book before. Then he also gave me huge relief, because I spent most of my life "unchurched" and wrote the book based on my own new “child of God” experience as I learned and studied at the Institute of Biblical and Historical Studies. I prayed for a sign from God that I am teaching good doctrine in this book, and Richard was that sign!
Most of you probably already know he is the co-Founder of Christian Education Resources of San Leandro, California and a former instructor at the Bay Cities Bible College, and Golden State School of Theology in Oakland, Ca. Which means if he gives his stamp of approval, the book is on its way to teaching many people about Christ and how the Bible is still our best directions for life on earth. But God wasn’t finished here. He showed me where Richard is also the training coordinator of Follow Up Ministries, Inc. a faith-based ministry to jail and prison inmates and a regular contributor to the Restorative Justice News out of Huntsville, Texas.
This is his review of “The Secret of Yahweh.”
Lessons in Character, Citizenship, and Patriotism
LeFerna Arnold-Walch combines mystery, history, character building, and patriotism in this wonderfully crafted children’s novel “The Secret of Yahweh.”
The story centers on Mary, Petey, and Jimmy, the good kids, and Con, Bitsy and their clique of friends, the mean kids. The story begins in Mss Sawyer’s fourth grade classroom on the first day of the new school year. A brief announcement over the loudspeaker informed the classes that they would no longer include the words “under God” when they gave the pledge of allegiance to the flag. The students raised questions regarding this change and Miss Sawyer gave them new insights into American traditions, the constitution, and individual freedoms.
At lunch Mary was bullied by Bitsy and a group of the mean girls. They took her lunch, pulled her pigtails, and called her fat. Mary was sent to the principal’s office for the remainder of the lunch hour. That evening Mary was visited by J. C. Lamb, a special messenger (un-secret agent 777) sent from God on a mission.
In addition to lessons on supporting American troops, Christian history, and the traditions of gratefulness for being “one nation under God” the book is filled with lessons on the value of personhood, the power of prayer, and the power of love. These lessons are learned in the classroom, the lunchroom, on the school bus, playing with friends, in the home, and through Mystery Sunday at church.
LeFerna describes the presence of good and evil in the world today. She then goes on to introduce Yahweh (God) as the master of the universe, the trinity, and the misunderstood message of the gospel. She explains the fall of man, the plan of salvation, miracles, and the role of the Holy Spirit in enabling individuals to see Yahshua (Jesus) as the greatest super hero of all time. She told how we got our Bible, various translations, and importance of a lifetime of Bible study.
The gift of the saving grace of Jesus is presented through the message of the “preacher”, the youth leader, and Miss Sawyer in language easily understood by children ages seven through twelve.
Over 100 illustrations throughout the book add another dimension and help in maintaining interest and reinforcing the message of the narrative. The book is sound in doctrine, easily understood and can be enjoyed by readers of all ages. A unique program for passing the book along to others becomes an evangelistic tool for the reader and challenges the seeker to find the “Secret of Yahweh.”

I can’t thank him enough for this wonderful review. This is the kind of review that sells a lot of books, so of course I wanted to know more about him and see what his credentials were like. I was dumbstruck! To have someone who was a teacher of theology himself review my book, was a miracle!! Most authors would immediately be using this review to sell as many books as possible, but that is not what spoke to my heart when I read his credentials. What God showed me was the fact that Richard was the training coordinator of Follow Up Ministries, Inc. a faith-based ministry to jail and prison inmates and a regular contributor to the Restorative Justice News out of Huntsville, Texas. When I read this, I instantly remembered meeting Babbie Mason at the Christian artist’s seminar in Estes Park Colorado. This was just after a fire destroyed everything we owned in 1998 and we were not in any financial shape for me to keep my registration, but I went anyway. I was hobbling around this park on a severe sprain after taking a bus all the way there from Michigan. I was sure there had to be a message in it for me. Babbie Mason is a wonderful woman from the area I am from, so I asked her for advice. She told me I need to entertain at the prisons. Hmmm. Isn’t it weird how I’d remember that now?
With this review from Richard, and how it reminded me of the wise words of Babbie Mason, it was clear that the message was now coming to me again. He wanted this book (that I am entertaining with) inside the prisons for everyone to read. Not just in their library, but enough books for all of them to read at once, discuss it together and share the experience of a children’s book making them feel like little children of God. For some of these people, they may have never read a children’s book or had one read to them. They may have missed out on God’s love a child needs growing up. Some of these people may not even know how to read! This book would be perfect for them. It is easy to understand and a refreshing change of pace for those who want to know more about Christianity and to feel God’s love for them through the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
To think it hadn’t been that long ago, that God showed me something else about our prisons. We were fighting arson charges on our own home. We beat the charges and it still took seven years in court to try and get what our crooked insurance company owed us. Meanwhile we lived in our pole barn all that time with the mice, red squirrels and raccoons. We never did win that case. Our lawyer made a mistake in the jury instructions, so if we ever wanted a home again, we had to hire the best malpractice attorney available to sue the lawyer. Then it turned out he was an acquaintance of our lawyer’s partner, saying it would not take long. Then this lawyer “forgot” to show up in court for our case and it was thrown out. It was a devastating seven years. We did end up getting two thirds of a small 35,000.00 settlement out of the deal. All it did is prove one lawyer did us wrong and the other one took a third of the money for not showing up in court and losing the entire cost of our home. Again! But God is good, and He has his reasons for everything. Besides showing me that some of our “best” legal leaders and law enforcers can be liars and backstabbers and to beware, something very important came out of it for me. I met many people who were in prison for arson crimes that they did not commit, mainly because of bad, and usually “appointed” representation and very smart insurance company lawyers. One woman’s story in particular took my heart. I wanted to help her, but my hands were tied without the money it took to fight something like that. I wrote to her for a while, and I found out she was already in the hands of people who were trying to help her. I sent her a CD and hoped to start some kind of a fund for her. But God must not have thought the timing was right and somehow we fell out of touch. Now I can send her a book! I will have to look her up again. Her name was Leticia and she has been in prison now for most of her life.
So, I am very happy to teach “sound doctrine” more than anything, to teach children how to forgive early in life, because they are going to need it! God showed me how you can be accused of something you did not do in the very important lesson of our fire. The police were saying that my son was the one who started the fire and he was scheduled for a polygraph when he slammed into the church and went into a coma. Then police changed their mind and said my husband did it instead, and even admitted in the deposition that the polygraphs are usually designed to fail so you will confess. Well confessing to something my husband didn’t do was not his style. They drilled him for hours and he came home gasping for breath feeling as though he was having a heart attack. (When he came down with congestive heart failure, the EKG showed where he had a heart attack) It cost 10,000.00 to bring and arson expert in from Virginia to show where the police had not even tried to look for the proof of the fire found at the scene, reporting that it was not arson at all. It started from some hot coals left in a pyrex dish where we had cleaned out our grill. But the police and insurance company were more intent on proving it was arson than proving how we thought the fire could have started. Looking back, the worst part of that was the fear of someone taking our younger son away because of our poor living conditions in the barn, and then not having a home to bring my son to when he got out of the hospital (which I explain below)
But back to the call I think I hear to put this book into prisons across America, isn’t it wonderful how God works in our lives? Lessons to prepare us , while we get little hints of God’s plan for us everywhere. It almost looks like I was a tough nut to crack!
I wrote “The Secret of Yahweh” to keep a promise I made to God when my son's car crashed into a church after our fire and he lay dying in a coma. Doctors said his brain injury was so severe he would die within two days. This was my firstborn son! Let me tell you, in a world of terror for our children, no mother should ever have to watch their child lay dying and wonder if he would be “saved” or not!
By this time in my life, I was taking his little brother to church regularly, but I had raised my first child the same way my parents raised me. We believed in God but we didn't go to church, which meant we were open to confusion about the Trinity and of course Jesus. The first thing I did was have my son Christened and when I saw him raise his knee high in the bed while we recited the 23rd Psalm... I then made a promise to God that if He spared my son, I would tell more children about His! And the miracles began! Doctors then said he would never be more than a vegetable if he did live, but they were wrong again. I was given a gift few mothers ever receive. I got to watch him grow again from an infant stage. He had to learn everything from sitting up to balance, feed himself and learn to talk. Then he went on to learn to read, write, and by the Grace of God, even walk for the second time in his life! There are eight stages to a coma and he now lives in the eighth stage... a groggy, almost drunk stage of increased emotions and short term memory problems with a lack of focus on more than one task at a time. He also has a slight balance problem as his right side is somewhat numb to him. But he is alive! He is a walking miracle.
God not only spared my son, He made sure that I would keep that promise and immediately started using my firstborn to help me do it. One year from the date of the accident my son enrolled in a major college! It took him eight years to get his degree, since he could not focus on more than one hard class at a time. His major was supposed to be chemistry, and the classes were extremely hard for a "normal" student, much less one with a brain injury. So guidance counselors talked him into changing his major to entrepreneurship (since he had most of the classes he needed already) and then he minored in chemistry. A degree in entrepreneurship? This seemed strange to me, but I knew God was in charge.
Through those last eight years he was in college, first I had a music ministry. I thought this was how I was supposed to keep my promise. But things went wrong and I was made to feel uncomfortable selling my “project” that was recorded in Nashville, even though I had been a singer and songwriter for years. The song I wrote and sang into my son’s ear while he was in a coma hit number one on a station in Arkansas, but making a career of this, just didn’t feel right to me. It was some time before I decided to bring to life a vision that God gave to me while writing one of the other songs on the CD project. The vision was of a little lamb that the children had pictured on their school supplies, their backpacks, lunch boxes and even on their clothes. They all knew that this little lamb represented Jesus and it made them feel safe to have him at school with them where he was against the rules. The song was called Mary’s Lamb. I ignored this vision for the longest time, thinking it was too much for me to handle. The vision was obviously an end result of a much bigger picture.
Retiring from the entertainment business when my second son was born, my husband helped me start my own screen print business. I had it for several years until it grew too large for me to handle. I tried to hire help but they couldn’t produce the quality product I insisted on, so I sold the business at a profit. A nearly perfect plan, God knew that I could make these printed items, but how was I going to sell them? How was I going to make this lamb that popular?
When my husband had an attack and found out he had congestive heart failure, I had to go to work to help support our family. I ended up taking a job with a teddy bear business of all things, and this company was doing over 5 million a year selling bears! When I read that America spent over $440,000,000.00 in one year collecting teddy bears, this gave me the idea to design a stuffed version of the lamb I saw in the vision¬—a jointed plush toy. I sat down and drew the cartoon vision of the lamb, but working and driving a long distance, I never found the time to do anything else with it. I also had a few bookings left in my music ministry, so I was trying to find time to travel, too.
I wanted to share my idea for the lamb with my boss at the teddy bear company, but before I could, several things happened on this job to make me uncomfortable enough to leave it. I have never quit a job in my life, but things were going on in this place that were so bad, that after I left, they must have figured I knew too much, because they blocked any communication I had with my boss, and even stopped the US mail when I tried to write to him and his wife and tell them why I had to leave. Looking back, now I know that God had only placed me on this job temporarily until I could learn the plush market trade in China— since almost all plush toys in America are made there. I was not there to solve their company problems or disrupt their business. The short three months I was there, I learned a lot about employees and what not to do in business. The warehouse supervisor was an alcoholic that drank on the job, and the person they wanted me to train for my job smoked pot on his breaks and at lunch. Outside of one good friend I made while I was there, I felt so lost that I became obsessed with lambs and saw them everywhere. I took them as signs from God and even printed up a little white teddy bear with a shirt that said “I’d rather be a lamb” and put it on my desk.
I set that company up with the right equipment for the job and helped them learn how to save money by printing their own transfers. But soon I felt like I was being used, and involved in something crooked when my supervisor kept bringing shirts in for me to print for another company. I found out that it was his company and I didn’t think the shirts were being run through our company records. Rumors were circling that I was supposed to train a lower paid person to do my job and then I would be laid off. So before I trained anyone, when my first raise was not coming through as promised, I just walked out and never looked back. I tried to do the right thing, and I’ve prayed so much for that company. This was a very important lesson for me to see what is going on in the workforce today, since I have been self-employed most of my adult years.
It’s no wonder our prisons are filled. There are a lot of messed up people out there who are managing to live their lives and hold down jobs. It’s crazy!
Once free of this company stress, I finally took the time to make the lamb. I pictured him again in my mind, then I made the cutest most cuddly toy you’ve ever seen. Fully jointed and child-safe. I took some sewing in home economics classes in high school, but didn’t remember a thing. I couldn’t even find a pattern for a lamb, so I designed it myself by tearing up a teddy bear and looking at how it was made. I really surprised myself! But I still had the “horse before the cart” so to speak. How was I going to get people to know that this little lamb represented Jesus and get him into our public schools?
One early morning (I was woke at 4:44 am quite often) I was given his name! It was strong and clear. J.C. Lamb would be our reminder of the sacrifice of the Savior! What a great name to remind everyone of Jesus! Next, I was given the idea to sew a heart patch on his chest with the sign of the fish on it. But I still didn’t know how to make this lamb popular on a budget of zero. My husband had congestive heart failure and was being forced to retire on a very small social security check that wouldn’t even make our new (and still unfinished) house payment, so I had to go back to work, afraid I would not have the time to put into this vision any longer. I prayed for more time, because this was my promise to God. How was I going to make this lamb popular?
I ended up taking another job for a screen print specialist, and again I received another lesson in bad business practices and how employees will stab you in the back in a minute. I had this job just long enough to be led to a friend who was a writer. We were both at a book signing. (Which now I know that everyone and their dog can write a book today) But this woman was so excited about becoming a “published author” herself. She was a reporter who was there because of her admiration of the author and her inquisitive nature, and I was there to sell him on a T-shirt design to go with the subject of his book. This is what opened my eyes to the world of writing. These people were so excited about this man’s book and my new friend was so excited about writing that she reminded me of something I’d completely forgotten about— an old dream of mine to write and illustrate children’s books. I had completely forgotten about my first picture book. It was rejected by one publisher and I never tried again. My spelling was horrible and my grammar a disaster, so I decided it was just a dream. But she stirred up memories and I pulled out the old book I wrote in 1993. It was a rhyming book called “Peanut Butter Toes” that taught children not to be afraid of the dark. I met her for lunch one day and showed her my book. She thought it was wonderful, and showed me why it was probably rejected. I had spelled whose, who’s. Soon after I met my new writing friend, I lost my job. This was all in a city I normally never go to.
This is of course was the person I feel God led me to, to help me see how to make the Lamb popular. He wanted me to write a book. It wasn’t just a book either. It was a novel. At first it was called “Meet J.C.” and then when he led me to the Institute and I learned about the secret of Yahweh, that became the new title of the book. He gave me the idea of the voice of Jesus to come blasting out of J.C. Lamb’s heart, just behind his heart patch, and He gave me the idea of the comic book youth lesson on the Master of the Universe and the greatest superhero of all time. He had me teach His commandments and prove how people can be so led astray. Who knew that the fall of man was still in process and that changing the name of Yahweh to Lord had a lot to do with the “bad angel’s” plan to confuse us all of these years!
I’ve laughed, I’ve cried and my hair is long and gray now, but the book was finally complete by 07-07-07. Other than a few more spelling and grammar mistakes to find and correct here and there, this was the date I knew God gave to me for the deadline. It wasn’t until the seventh revision that He gave me the idea of the Give and Share Book™ to help spread the Word and hopefully make the book float in a sea of over 350,000 self-published books a year!
The J.C. Lamb ministry tells our testimony and asks for donations to help get him out there, but for years, no one donated a dime to support the promise. It was mostly because I hated to ask for money. I left it up to the website of jclamb.org and God’s timing. Then my son finally graduated in 2007 after watching me struggle with the book for years, praying my husband’s health would hold up long enough to let him work until I kept my promise and God provided for us. I learned as I went. (Since I am not really a trained writer or illustrator) He was the one who made the entrepreneurial suggestion to incorporate the ministry into Mary’s Lamb, Inc. and sell shares of stock to friends and family to help me pay to publish and market the book. This was when I learned why the college talked Him into changing his major!
So now, the book is out thanks to the few shareholders we have, and God is working to help me keep my promise! My son took one year to help me get the business off the ground and the China negotiations started, then he returned to college, still determined to get that degree in chemistry!
Now, God is clearly telling me, through Richard’s review, that this is not just another children’s book. It is for HIS children of all ages, and especially the ones who are lost. Now I feel like he is telling me he wants Mary’s Lamb to go to Prison! So that is my new goal. I was already in the process of sending books over to the troops in Iraq. I thought the love of Jesus, through a child’s eyes would comfort them. And today I hear in my heart that prisoners need comfort, too!
This is where you come in. Who do I talk to and how do I find a way to pay the cost on these books so I can send them out to the prisons? Who would help me with this project?

Thank you for ALL your time. I am sorry my post was long, but God wanted you to know the whole story. There must be someone out there that He wants me to meet.

Lamb Hugs,
LeFerna