My name is Barbara Turner, . I have heard so many stories and every story I have heard has meaning and value. Stories that will prick your heart and make you look at your life in a way that makes you want to value every single goodness in your life.  To this day, I still struggle with how to testify to the overpouring of God's goodness in my life without diminishing the pains that I have caused to the people I love or the people that I have hurt.  God tells us the truth will set us free and I have learned to trust Him at His Word. I lived the first half of my life as an empty vessel.  I cannot pinpoint the beginning of my dislike of myself, but it caused me to operate in ways that served no purpose and created not just bad situations but chaotic ones.  After my father passed in 2000, I was beyond self-destructive and merely existing was an understatement. By the time I was arrested in 2002, I just wanted to erase my existence from everyone's life.  If only we could relive our bad choices but there is purpose in our freedom of choice, even when we are destructive to everything we touch. God has a plan. At the time of my fathers' passing, I was the Business Manager of the Pershing Club for the United States Army. A few months after his death, my boss chose to swap management, and gave my position to my coworker (whom he was having an affair with) and placed me in charge of the establishment she managed.  It was called the Davis Club, which operated bingo, pizza delivery and a small lounge within the barracks of the single soldiers.  In 2001, the Davis Club was robbed while I was out to dinner with my son and some friends.  A man was shot and killed during the robbery.  A year later, I was arrested in connection with the robbery.  During the drive to the detention center, the agent driving began to express his disgust for me using an Asian accent, calling me a gang banger based on the skin color of my friends and the type of music I listened to, and told me that my son would never amount to anything because of me.  The other officer in the car told him that his comments were not necessary, but he continued with his expressions until I knew I had nothing to live for.  I jumped over the seat of the car and drove it underneath a diesel truck that were passing at 81mph. In March 2004, I went to trial with my 3 codefendants.  The court refused to separate our trials.  After a week, the jury found us guilty of all charges. Title 1111 Murder (Life); Title 2111 Robbery (15 years); Title 924(c) Unlawful Use of a Weapon (Life consecutive); Title 371 Conspiracy (5 years).  For the additional charge I obtained from trying to kill myself in the car accident, the jury found me guilty of a "crime of passion," stating that the agent provoked me to act outside of my normal character.  Title 1114 Attempted murder of a federal agent (20 years).  Eight months after our trial, I was sentenced to the maximum years allowable. Over the course of time, I filed all my appeals. I lost them all.  I filed for Executive Clemency in 2015 (petition #C179991) and it is still pending.  Thinking back to how I felt about those 2 life sentences in front of me, I thought it DID erase me from existence. Greater things were to come. I have been incarcerated now for nearly 19 years, and I have found that I am still breathing, and I still wake up every single day, and I still see people smile and I still see the joy in people's hearts and life does not end in the way we feel or the things we have done. God put me right in the middle of a world of brokenness and purposed me to find goodness in people and show them that it sits right there in their hearts and the more we submit to and share that goodness, the more it takes over like an infection.  I would never want to minimize the pains that I have caused, and I know there is not a way to make up for wrongs I have done, and I would give my whole being to bring joy back to those lives.  For now, I have the determination to show that God finds us where we are, and he rains down blessings on us.  To share with one another to show his love and purpose for each one of us.  He has gifted me in paining and sculpting (of recycled materials) beyond my own understanding and I share it on endless projects for the community--both the staff, outside visitors, and the prison population.  Through art, I pray that people can see that anything that we see as worthless can become beautiful, worthy, and useful elements of life.  If trash can be useful and meaningful, human lives can too. God has gifted me in planning, producing, and organizing events to bring education and awareness in an enjoyable and entertaining way.   He has also gifted me in technology beyond what is fathomable. I have been gone for nearly 20 years and can still see something and understand how it works.  Incredible!  One day, my hope is to share these gifts in our society that even in its brokenness, can bear witness to the miraculous goodness of human nature that God planted in each one of us.  And to show that our community is what will lift us up when we are down, help us when we are hungry, raise our children in love and listens when our hearts are broken.  I pray God's mercy and grace finds its' way to every heart yearning for forgiveness for the life they have lived in confusion and darkness because He gives us new life grown in abundance in those broken places. It is my hope that God blesses you in ways that you never thought possible just as He has blessed me. Sincerely, Barbara Turner