Center offers overnight stay for families visiting inmates in Columbus prison

TABOR CITY, NC (WWAY) — Having a loved one in prison can be hard on a family. A new place in Columbus County is trying to make things a little easier.

The Matthew 25 Center will offer a free night’s stay to those visiting loved ones at the Tabor City Correctional Institution.

“Mercy triumphs over judgment,” Janet Brooks said. “God’s mercy does. It always does. That’s what we want to give to the people that come here, is not judgment in any way, but just to say we love you.”

In her years of volunteering in various inner cities and prison, Brooks has seen the turmoil families go through when a loved one is in prison.

“A person going to prison just rips a family apart,” she said. “So to give them some hope and some peace is what we want. We want them to be able to come here and just get away from perhaps an environment that’s not healthy.”

That place, Brooks says, is the Matthew 25 Center. She and her husband built the center with the help of donations and volunteers on Swamp Fox Highway for families who are visiting an inmate at nearby Tabor City Correctional Institution.

A stay at the center is all free of cost, thanks to the help of organizations around the region.

“The church saw it as an opportunity,” Burnett Coleman said. “A mission opportunity that is right at their door. They felt like this would be a good way to help provide a ministry.”

Coleman helped get things with Matthew 25 up and running. He says his church, Tabor City Baptist Church, donated money to the cause.

Why Matthew 25?

“Matthew 25 is a passage in the Bible where Jesus talks about, “If you’ve done it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me,” Brooks said. “So he says if you go into prison, like you go into prison and you visited me.”

Brooks says they don’t want people to be ashamed for having family in prison. Through the center, she wants them to find hope.

The official ribbon cutting is April 27, but Brooks wants people to know that they’ll welcome people as early as this week.

There is a Matthew 25 also located in Burgaw.