NY Jets quarterback Tim Tebow, through talk and prayer, is helping turn inmates' lives around End Zone: Deliver them from evil LAWTEY, Fla. - Willie James Ashley is a 55-year-old former Air Force man from Miami who had a long career in the cocaine business and once caught a pass from Tim Tebow. He caught a couple of them, actually. The first one Ashley brought down in a crowd, with his thick body and his buzz cut, and his blue, prison-issue uniform, Tebow throwing a Hail Mary to the back row of the bleachers in a crowded gymnasium. The next one came on the gym floor, where Tebow missed him on a timing pattern, then threw one more, a flare pass, which Ashley caught easily. That was almost three years ago, but Willie Ashley hasn’t forgotten the pass, or the man who delivered it, in front of 300 inmates in a hot gym at Lawtey Correctional Institution. “I was at the lowest point of my life,” Willie Ashley says. “I took my whole family down, and I was suffering.” He talks about feeling worthless and ashamed and angry, how regret and pessimism were pounding him like a mallet. If it didn’t all start to change the moment he met Tim Tebow, Heisman Trophy winner and national champion and then a Florida Gator icon, it was pretty close. “He inspired me with his message and he inspired me with his walk with God,” Ashley says. “He helped me see that the Lord would give me another chance, and understand that the Lord takes nothing and makes something out of it all the time. Whatever trash people may think you are, God says, ‘I can make you a treasure.’” Willie Ashley will be in the Lawtey Correctional Institution chapel Sunday, and like Christians everywhere on this Easter Sunday, will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As he goes about trying to rebuild and restore his own life, Ashley says he thanks God for bringing him to this place, a medium-security facility with 800 inmates on the outskirts of a small, impoverished community in northeast Florida. He thanks God for bringing him before Tebow, too, a sentiment shared by Reginald Spivey, Gerald Evans and Tyron Thomas — three other inmates who have heard Tebow’s impassioned Christian testimony in two visits here, and talk about a Tebowmania that is altogether different from the one that has engulfed the big city the last few weeks. It is not about green No. 15 jerseys flying off the racks, or overflow press conferences, or even about who should play quarterback for the New York Jets. It’s about a man who, by all accounts, not only lives his faith, but shares it with fire and fervor you need to hear to believe. Whatever one’s religious beliefs, or lack of same, it is impossible not to view Tim Tebow as an authentic man who wants to share what he considers the greatest gift of his life: the love and mercy of a gracious God. Read the rest at this link Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f...inmates-lives-article-1.1057980#ixzz1rPwMmI3l
Lmfao... Yeah inmates always seem to turn themselves around in jail. Then when they get out 85% of them end up back in jail.
Out of sheer morbid curiousity and because I have masochistic tendencies on Internet forums I wanted to ask you.....did you even read the 4 page article?
says more about our America's prison systems than anything else. We don't try and rehabilitate inmates in this country. We store them in cages and concrete rooms until they "repay their to debt to society" in the hope they learned their lesson. But all we really do is piss them off and send them back into society the same or sometimes even worse.
Well how else are we going to put them back in prison to generate enormous profits for those holding the purse strings of the penal system/war on drugs/etc? Tim Tebow for Earth Czar, 2012.
No it says more about the way people are. U can only rehabilitate the ones who really want it. They put themselves there in the 1st place. That the problem with this world instead of people manning up and stop blaming everybody and start taking the blame for the shit they do.
Tebow and Burress go way back.... Tebow Delivers Inmates From Evil http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f...-helping-turn-inmates-lives-article-1.1057980 Not any Burress connection, but funny just the same. This is what the Jet's locker room will look like in 3 months....
At a public hearing I attended to speak in support of my friend getting a beer license for his restaurant, I observed the hearing for a prisoner requesting work release. A preacher spoke saying the prisoner had found Jesus, then a prison guard spoke saying, "Every prisoner says they have found Jesus. I have been a prison guard for 35 years and I ain't seen him yet".
So EVRYONE that has ever been convicted of a crime has zero ability to turn their life around ? That sounds real intelligent and open minded . Read the article if your going to spout off about it .
Anti Tebow army loves to make numbers up. Try again with your 85% , studis show that it's more in the 52% range , so roughly half never end up back in jail. http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/09/29/percent-of-released-prisoners-returning-to-incarceration/
Just because I think Tebow is garbage as a QB that makes me "anti Tebow"? The show I watched a few weeks ago said 85% go back to jail.
Yes, it does. Because it proves you aren't objective. If Luck or RG3 does what Tebow did in their first 16 starts, people like you would be slurping them constantly.
Pretty much -- I think it's splitting hairs to say otherwise. You don't think he belongs in the league, don't think he belongs on the roster, you think he's a joke that's soon to be exposed . . . . in internet shorthand, that's over in the "anti" section. I think Flacco is a problem. Doesn't mean I hate him as person, but I think "anti-Flacco" would be a reasonable description. I think they should find another quarterback.
why if you hate the guy as a qb would you also hate him as a person who is at least going out and trying to help people? sounds like the typical guy who is sitting at home on easter sunday helping nobody. just bitching about everyone else.
Funny how a post about some worthwhile jail ministry turns into a bashing fest. Evidence some folks lead very unhappy lives..............
