A roller coaster of activity surrounds Sister Martha Niemann from her peaceful perch in the living room at Journey House, a transitional home in Kansas City, Missouri, for women returning from prison. She takes it all in: from a sister returning from the bus station...
Trading cellmates for nuns. Some women leaving Missouri prisons say a place called Journey House, one of the programs under Journey to New Life, is life-changing. Now the people who run Journey House as well as other Journey to New Life programs hope next year’s state...
Fifty-eight-year-old Loren May is proud of his apartment and everything in it. When he was released from prison in 2014 after nine years, he was given $43 and told to get a job and stay away from other convicted felons if he wanted to stay out of prison. May was...
A roller coaster of activity surrounds Sister Martha Niemann from her peaceful perch in the living room at Journey House, a transitional home in Kansas City, Missouri, for women returning from prison. She takes it all in: from a sister returning from the bus station...
Through flurries and freezing cold, Brandi Smith walks to the warm snuggle of a little girl’s hug. Alexis, 9, gets off the school bus and there’s Mom. “Our first snow day,” Smith says and throws her arms around Alexis, who buries a smile in her mother’s neck. These...
The morning is cold and dark when Sister Rose McLarney comes out of the old brick building on Beacon Hill and opens the gates to the street. She gets the 5 a.m. duty because she will leave soon to go swimming. For now, she goes back inside and there in the warm...
