Ninety Letters · Prison Letter-Writing Ministry Website Template · sample contentOpen editorGet this website
Older woman in black looking up thoughtfully while holding an open book
Marjorie Telfair

A letter from our director

Columbus, October 2026

Dear friend,

In the spring of 2009 I answered a notice in our church bulletin asking for someone to write to a man at Ross Correctional. I sent him one careful page about my tomato plants. He sent back four pages about his grandmother's.

Lonnie and I wrote ninety letters to each other before he came home in 2015. He told me later that mail call was the only time all week anyone said his name without a number after it. That is why this ministry exists: so that more names get called.

You don't need to be a good writer. You need a pen, a stamp we will happily pay for, and the patience to wait three weeks for an answer. Come to a writing night and we will help you start.

Gratefully,

Marjorie

Marjorie TelfairDirector and co-founder

Write your first letter

How a letter travels

Your home address never goes inside

Every letter, both directions, passes through our P.O. box on the east side. It adds about four days and takes away most of the worry.

Read the mail-room rules

  1. Step 1: You write

    At your kitchen table or at a writing night. Sign with your first name only, and leave the envelope unsealed.

  2. Step 2: We read and log it

    A mail-room volunteer checks it against the prison's rules, notes the date and puts it in a plain envelope with our return address.

  3. Step 3: It goes inside

    Most Ohio prisons deliver within ten days. Some scan letters and hand out copies, so we print in dark ink on white paper.

  4. Step 4: The reply comes back

    It lands in our box, not yours. We mail it on to you, or scan it the same day if you prefer email.

The year in the mail

What went through the box

Counted from the mail-room log, which two volunteers keep by hand every Monday and Thursday.

October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026

Presented to our nine partner congregations at the annual supper, September 26, 2026.

Help pay for next year's stamps
  1. Letters forwarded, both directions16,412
  2. Volunteers with an active pen pal238
  3. People inside writing back2311
  4. Ohio prisons on our mailing list14
  5. Median days from your desk to a reply19
  6. Forever stamps licked, stuck and mailed39,870
  1. 1Each letter counted once, on the day it left the box.
  2. 2Some writers keep two or three correspondences going.
  3. 3Paid for by readers of this page, at about 78 cents each.

From the letters

Both sides of the envelope

Nobody has typed my name right on an envelope in nine years. You spelled it right. That's the whole letter, I just wanted you to know.
Ray D.Writing from Marion since 2022
My pen pal sends me the box scores every Monday. I don't even like baseball. I like Mondays now.
Angela P.Writing from Marysville
I signed up to encourage somebody. Four years in, Terrell is the one who talks me through my bad weeks.
Bonnie K.Volunteer writer since 2021
Don't send me the verse you think I need. Send me the one you read this morning.
Hector V.Writing from Chillicothe
We have never met. He prayed for my mother by name the week she died.
Glen W.Volunteer writer since 2017
Mail call is at four. Since March I stand up for it.
Oscar J.Writing from Lebanon
Pages of handwritten cursive letters

Writing night, 7:20 PM

Most people write their first page in about forty minutes. Nobody reads it but you and the mail room.

Why paper

A letter can be read forty times. A text cannot.

Most Ohio prisons now offer paid tablet messaging, and some of our writers use it. But a paper letter can be kept under a mattress, read again on a bad night, and passed to a cellmate who never gets mail of his own.

So we ask for handwriting, or at least a signature in ink. Lined paper, dark pen, one or two pages. The men and women who write back tell us the handwriting is the part they look at first.

  • White or lined paper only, no card stock
  • Blue or black ink, no gel pens or markers
  • First name only, and no home address anywhere
  • We supply envelopes and stamps at every writing night
Read the full mail-room rules
Barbed wire silhouetted against an orange sunset

Why we write

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.
Hebrews 13:3King James Version

Coming up

Writing nights and card days

Oct13

Writing night

7:00 PM · Oak Street fellowship hall

Coffee, envelopes and a reply or two read aloud before we start.

Add to calendar

Oct27

Writing night: first letters

7:00 PM · Oak Street fellowship hall

Half the room is new. Marjorie walks through a sample first letter at 7:10.

Add to calendar

Nov7

Christmas card assembly

10:00 AM · Oak Street fellowship hall

Four hundred cards signed and sorted by prison before the December mail-room cutoff.

Add to calendar

Nov10

Writing night

7:00 PM · Oak Street fellowship hall

Bring the letter you have been meaning to answer.

Add to calendar

Nov17

Writer training: boundaries and red flags

6:30 PM · Online

Ninety minutes on money requests, legal questions and when to call us.

Add to calendar
One page is enough for a first letter.

Ask to be matched and we will introduce you to a pen pal within ten days.