On Jan. 8, 2019, Desmond Meade registered to vote in Orlando, Fla., with his wife by his side and photographers capturing the moment. Meade spent several years in prison about two decades ago on felony drug and weapon charges. Now he serves as president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), which successfully pushed for a state constitutional amendment that restored the voting rights to ex-felons who had completed their sentences.

The Sacred Heart Community Clinic in Round Rock, Texas, had 6,300 visits last year, all of them from low-income, uninsured patients. Liz Burton-Garcia started the clinic nearly 10 years ago on the campus of St. William Catholic Church, where she is a member. Her sales background helped her drum up local support: Doctors donated their time, construction companies donated materials, and many others offered money and prayer.

(11th in a series on long marriages)

Stephen and Sherry Collins had been married five years when, in 1980, difficult circumstances led them to Christian faith. On bed rest while pregnant with the couple’s second baby, Sherry, a Jew, watched the film Jesus of Nazareth on TV. After giving birth, she read the Bible during her hospital recovery and became convinced Jesus was the Messiah.

Janice Wilkens received an upsetting call from her son on Jan. 2. “He was devastated, and he was nervous,” she told WMC-TV in Memphis, Tenn. “He wanted help right away.” Her son, 36-year-old Denorris Howell, was an inmate at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Miss., in the notorious Unit 29, where prison officials reported major disturbances due to gang violence.

First in an occasional series on long ministry

While serving on the board of a homeless shelter in Indianapolis between 2002 and 2012, David Palmer sometimes led Bible studies for the people staying there. He regularly heard a similar refrain.

“When I would go, I would typically ask people, ‘How are you doing?’” he recalled. “And the answer was so often, ‘I’m looking for a job.’ And I heard that over and over and over again.”

(Tenth in a series on long marriages.)