While Sharon Dutra’s story is an American one, her hardships and tumultuous early life could all have happened in any country in the world—places where she also now freely shares her ministry and Bible Study books. Over the years, she has become a great friend, prayer partner and encourager to me.
Sharon Dutra’s emotions ranged from wonder to worry and back again as she headed—voluntarily this time—into the California Institution for Women. She had shared a tiny cell at this women’s state prison in southern California with another inmate several decades ago in what proved to be the last stop in an already long series of arrests and incarcerations.
Like most who end up ‘on the wrong side of the tracks,’ Sharon’s early life reads like a dark thriller. Her mother left when Sharon was about five; her alcoholic, womanizing father had been married four times by the time she was 17.
Young Sharon, shuttled from one foster home to another, felt abandoned and alone. By 13, she resorted to drugs to dull the pain and growing sense of worthlessness and by 15, had run from her latest home to an even worse life on the streets.
In and out of various detention facilities in the years that followed, with each escape she learned more about ‘life on the streets’, while her self-hatred and contempt for others escalated.
Marriage with an ex-con and two children later, her life continued its increasingly dark and steep downward spiral. Hard-core drugs, near-death experiences, prostitution, homelessness, suicide attempts—all culminated in her thirteenth and final arrest.
“Because of my lengthy criminal record,” she explains,” I was sent to a women’s prison in Southern California, where I already knew some of the inmates from my time on the street.”
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| A VIEW FROM OUTSIDE THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTION FOR WOMEN; PHOTO: TAG CHRISTOF |
That, thankfully, proved to be her ultimate conviction in more ways than one. While there, she read Al Capone’s Devil Driver, by and about George Meyer, the notorious crime boss’s chauffeur who had killed many people himself and ended up in prison, where he eventually traded in his life of crime for Life with Jesus.
The book helped open her eyes to the divine realization that God alone could help her out of her misery and pain and was right there with her, waiting to be invited into her life.
“I got on my knees and cried out to Him for over an hour,” she remembers, “weeping for all the wrongs I had done. When I got up off the cell floor, I was a brand-new person.”
A few weeks later, Sharon moved from 23-hour-a-day lockdown to the general prison population. She immediately began attending church, where the prison chaplain presented her with her very own bible.
“I read it for hours every day!” she recalls. “After a lifetime derailed by destructive lies, finding God’s truth felt like discovering a cool stream in the desert.”
“At first, I could hardly fathom that Jesus would love a sinner like me, much less that my sins were totally forgiven,” she marvels. “But the more I read, the more the Holy Spirit confirmed the shocking reality of the Gospel! I drew special encouragement from Joel 2:25, which speaks of God ‘repaying us for the years the locusts have eaten’.”
She couldn’t help but share the astonishingly freeing Good News with others in prison, and soon picked back up her guitar-playing to lead in worship. Eventually, she also began teaching Bible studies for fellow prisoners. When finally released, she returned to her hometown of Santa Cruz, California.
“But the only people I knew there were drug addicts and prostitutes!” she recalls. “I wondered why God had returned me to this kind of environment. How would I overcome my reputation there? But God graciously gave me many opportunities to witness to those I had run with.”
She eventually returned to school, earned a registered nursing degree, and married. She and her husband Michael, through their Be Transformed Ministries, now help people from many backgrounds both come to know Jesus and become His disciples.
She began leading Bible studies while still in prison and continues to, now using books she has written herself to fill needs and answer questions she couldn’t find in existing materials. Her books (Be Transformed, New Beginnings, and Fishers of Men) have been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Farsi; many have been freely sent overseas (mostly for pastoral training) and over 35,000 of her books have been sent to prisons, jails and rehab centers across the U.S.
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| 250 BIBLES AND 500 OF SHARON’S BOOKS WERE SHIPPED TO GHANA TO BE USED IN CHURCHES AND PRISONS. HERE IS A PRESENTATION IN A GHANA PRISON |
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| PASTORS IN SOUTH AFRICA GATHER AFTER TRAINING WITH SHARON’S BOOKS |
On her December return to the prison where she had met Jesus, Sharon shared her story with a roomful of hungry inmates—making new friends and several new converts before ‘escaping’ into the waiting arms of her husband outside the prison. They rejoiced together over all God had done and continues to do through their own and others’ lives redirected to the One who created them.
“After so many years on the run—from home, from authority, from life itself—I praise God for giving rest to my weary soul,” she explains. “No life is too broken for God to heal. I am living proof.”
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Christianity Today recently featured Sharon’s story (I Used to Run with Drug Addicts and Prostitutes. Now I Share the Gospel with Them) and Victorious Living has her story in their January 2022 issue.
MICHAEL AND SHARON DUTRA WITH ONE OF SHARON’S BOOKS
To see and hear Sharon’s testimony, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuH8U_dRdiw
To contact Sharon or learn more about her ministry, please visit: betransformedministries.com or email her at: betransformed@betransformedministries
