Jonathan Bellamy heard Anthony Bostock's story.

Anthony: Kind of. We hadn't been in constant connection, but he'd always been on my mind, because we had a very close relationship. If the truth be told, I didn't really like Simon when we first met, because he was very loud and bonkers and you couldn't shut him up about Jesus. Everywhere we went, whether it was in the corner shop, or whether it was in somebody's house who he'd never met, he was straight on trying to tell these people about Jesus and what the Lord had done for us on His cross. So I always thought about him in prison, but there was a reluctance in my heart to want to meet back up with him, but I think God had other plans and I was always going to partner back up with Simon on my release.

Jonathan: So tell us what happened then, how did you connect with the Walk and can you briefly sum up what the Walk is?

Anthony: Walk Ministries is something in Stoke-on-Trent and it facilitates men who are coming out of prison, or have that kind of background. At the moment we have two houses, which accommodate eight men. We've just acquired two flats as a move on programme, so when the guys have come through the programme for 12 months, then they can go and move onto semi-supported accommodation in a flat. We run all kinds of discipleship programmes and we try and work with the churches and do as much to educate the man how to walk in church and educate the church how to deal with these kind of men who aren't your average everyday Christians.

Jonathan: So you decided to become a part of this?

Anthony: Yes. When you're being released from prison, there's always a sense of fear, whether you're walking with the Lord or not. You have fear about what you're going to do when you get out; what the outside world will be like and how you'll cope. Now I'm a Christian, there was this sense of, am I going to make it out there now? Even though I'd walked in these few months leading up to this last sentence, it was still this sense of, am I going to make it out there now? How am I going to be a Christian out there, now I haven't got this sentence looming? When I was walking as a Christian on the outside before, I knew where I was going, I was going back to prison, so it was kind of a holiday period with God that I had, but now it had started to get real. I'd got to get out there and build myself a new life around Christian principles. So I got in touch with Simon and Simon's first message into the prison was, "Tell him it's all sorted", which did not give me any reassurance whatsoever. So I informed the chaplain that you must get back in touch with him and ask him to give me more details. He got back in touch and said there's a place for you here in a shared house, we're building something that we'd always talked about doing when we were walking on the outside before, come and be a part of it, I want you to partner up with me and be a Jonathan to what is David.

Jonathan: And is that the way it has developed?

Anthony: It has yeah. Simon is the spearhead of this ministry, but he would tell you himself that without the support and the counsel and knowing that I'm walking by his side, I think he'd self-admittedly struggle to do what he does on a day to day basis, so yeah I am that Jonathan to King David.

Jonathan: That's not all that you've done though, because in terms of seeing how Jesus was going to build your life coming out of prison, He took you in an unexpected direction didn't He?

Anthony: Yes. When I was in prison I was reading a book by an evangelist called Barry
Woodward, who was a very well-known evangelist. In some parts in his testimony he talked about a thing called Bible College and I thought, what on God's great earth is a Bible College? So at the same time I'm having these question marks, the chaplain came along and her seeing me in and out of God's word all the time, she suggested that maybe it would be good for you to make some applications to go to a Bible College on your release. And I was like, "Wow that's just come up in a book that I was reading and I'm trying to figure out in myself what is one?" She explained in its simplest form that it's a college that relates and educates you all about the Bible.

So this desire started to grow in my heart and I sent applications out to Cliff College, St John's College, which is in Nottingham and Charis Bible College in Walsall. Out of the three, only one college replied and that was Charis Bible College and they generously sent me their first module. They sent me a module called 'A Sure Foundation', which was all about the importance of God's word and it covered the parable of the sower in depth, which was confirming that God's word was actually God's word and this was the written word of God and I had a good reason to be addicted to it.

Jonathan: That's fantastic, but how did you afford it, because you have to pay to do these things?

Anthony: Yes, so here's where the great testimony of God's provision starts in my life. I was released and I joined the Walk project and I joined the shared house and I was told by Simon and the gang to just relax. I started to go round the churches and share my testimony and I was getting involved in things. I started to work for the building company that we have as an extension of the ministry and used skills that I'd acquired in life with that. But the money that I was earning, was nowhere near enough to pay the funds for a Bible College. So a lady by the name of Andrea Stafford, who was a volunteer in the prison, had now come to volunteer for Walk Ministries and work with these guys, such as myself, outside of the prison, running discipleship courses and generally being there as somebody that we could ring and she would pray for us and do general things and go out for a coffee. She had graduated from Charis Bible College in 2010, so Simon said, "Do you know that Andrea is a Charis graduate?" and I was like, "No!" So I phoned Andrea and asked her to do me a favour, would she get my foot in the door there and say that I'd made this application and they'd sent me the first module and I have this desire to come, but don't know how I'm ever going to pay the fees.

Two weeks later, I remember that I'd had a free day to myself and I was cleaning the house, reading the word, listening to praise music, the general things that I'd do around the house and a letter came through the door that was addressed to me. I could clearly see that on the top of the envelope was the heading Charis Bible College. So that came with a lot of excitement and I was like, "Wow". I opened it and they invited me along to go and spend the day with them on an open day, so I could see what they do there and they'd get a gist of who I was and see if I still had this desire once I'd gone along and seen the curriculum and the average everyday routine of the college.

I was so excited and I rang Andrea and I was so grateful for her putting my name in. She was over the moon that Charis had written to me, but then she told me that she hadn't given them my name yet. I found out that Charis had seen this application form, which in its purest form was skeleton, I had no passport photo, no £65 signing on fee and no references outside of the chaplain in the prison. I had nothing but my name and address and my address at this point was HMP Stoke Heath. They told me that this application form just resonated with them and there was something that was in it that they felt the need to chase me up.

So here I am now at the Bible College on an open day, ready to go and sit in my interview with the director, a man called David Illingworth. My interview time came along and I walked into his office and he lit up like a halogen lamp and you could see it in his face and he was like, "Wow, it's you". That was his opening line and I was like, "Yeah, it's me. This is a little bit weird, what's going on?" He said, "When you came into the college today, I felt so drawn to you. He said there was a light shining out of you, but I felt really drawn to you and at some point today I wanted to come and find out who you were and here you are in my office."

We went through the practicalities of the interview and I told him about myself. I told him about past offences that I'd committed and stuff that he needed to know as part of the interview. He then offered me a scholarship for all three years at the Bible College, which means for those that don't know, I got free placements for all three years.

In a conversation with Andrea after the interview, because Andrea had taken me along, he said to Andrea, "As soon as that man entered my office, the Lord said, 'scholarship all three years'." He said, "So it really didn't matter what he'd said in his interview, I'd already been instructed to give him a scholarship."