This is Elvira's story. Elvira is a remarkable, quiet, strong, gentle woman who lives in San Miguel. She is a one-person, unpaid, volunteer Prison Ministry at the San Miguel women's prison. Three or four times a week she visits the prison to provide spiritual and earthly care for the women. She's a lay missionary, social worker, parole supervisor & foster mother for the women all rolled up into one.In her spare time she works full time for an electronics company, where she earns less in a week than many people in San Francisco would pay for a nice dinner for two; she raises her own beautiful children, including 8 year old Oscar; she maintains a nice home; and she always has a few newly released prisoners living in her home....providing them the housing and care they need until they can become established without turning back to the crimes that landed them in prison. She calls the Bishop in San Salvador and asks him to see if the group of Americans just arrived from San Francisco can check their wallets and see if they can afford to pay $20 per mattress to buy a few mattresses for women prisoners who are sleeping on bare concrete floors because the prison is crowded with twice the number of women that it was meant to accommodate. You should visit Elvira and let her tell you the women's stories.
