RELIGION

Inmates at the Chino state prison complex this week received 16,400 boxes of home-baked cookies and other gifts from members of the Crystal Cathedral, the 10th annual Christmastime offering from the Garden Grove congregation.

Each box contained, in addition to cookies, a copy of the New Testament, stationery, a handmade Christmas card from children of the church, a 1989 calendar and a book written by the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, senior pastor of the church.

The Rev. Ray Van Beek, who heads the church’s prison ministry, said five truckloads of the Christmas boxes were delivered to Chino on Monday and Tuesday.

In an independent ministry, 4,300 Christmas cards were donated to the young inmates of the Youth Training School at the Chino prisons. Charles Richey of Glendora, working through Chino Chaplain Hal Jackson, solicited the cards and envelopes from 10 churches, including Grace Baptist Church of Glendora; Bethel Christian Fellowship and Community Free Methodist Church, both in Chino; Duarte Fellowship Church and St. Martha’s Episcopal Church in West Covina.

“We distributed enough to allow each ward to have two Christmas cards,” said Richey, a Fuller Theological Seminary student.

Keeping with his custom, Los Angeles Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony will include Masses at prisons as a part of his holiday schedule. He will celebrate a Mass at 3 p.m. today for young men and women detained at Camp Scott Juvenile Detention Center and nearby Camp Scudder. On Christmas morning, he will celebrate Mass for prisoners at Central Men’s Jail in downtown Los Angeles.

CONGREGATIONS

Volunteers from Temple Israel of Hollywood will fill in for Christian workers at the Salvation Army facility on Hollywood Boulevard on Sunday to serve the Christmas Day dinner there. This is the third consecutive year the Reform Jewish congregation has provided volunteers. “It feels good to do for others and it gives us something worthwhile to do on Christmas Day when we normally feel at loose ends,” said Susan Fenyves, who chairs the project.

MEDIA

Campus Crusade for Christ announced that its “Jesus” film, its principal missionizing tool for worldwide evangelism, was dubbed into 20 additional languages during 1988, bringing the total to 123 languages. The latest was Kadazan-Dusun, a language spoken in Malaysia, officials said. The film, first released in 1979, is a cinematic rendering of the Gospel of Luke. The San Bernardino-based organization said that about 160 other mission agencies also use the film.