THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 8, 1995 TAG: 9504080243
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
When Maria Santos saw a ragged old man curled up on the pavement behind a convenience store one Thursday morning last April, she stopped in her tracks.
The man was dressed in dirty, threadbare clothes and was asleep on newspapers between two air conditioning units.
``I heard the Holy Spirit tell me to talk to this man,'' remembers Santos, a Navy wife who immigrated to the United States from Portugal 20 years ago. The mother of four was taking a shortcut to her English class at the Adult Learning Center.
When Santos approached the man, he was surprised. He said to her, ``What are you doing here woman? You're not supposed to talk to strangers,'' she recalls.
That chance meeting a year ago started Santos on a personal mission to help and feed the homeless in Virginia Beach. Working out of her Dodge Caravan and Salem Lakes kitchen, Santos has continued to serve hearty homemade soup and loaves of Portugese bread to those who gather nightly outside the Virginia Beach Social Services building.
During the winter, Santos shows up only on Wednesdays and Fridays; the homeless receive help from November to April through a shelter program run by Volunteers of America and local churches. That program ended last night.
Starting today, Santos will again become a nightly fixture seven days a week for those who gobble up her acts of goodness, just across the street from where she met that first homeless man a year ago.
``He told me that he was homeless, so I told him that I would bring him food and pray with him,'' Santos says, continuing her story about that first encounter.
When Santos, 43, and her son Michael, 15, came back with food later that day, the old man had been joined by a younger man, also homeless. After feeding the two and praying with them, Santos advised the younger man to go to Open Door Chapel, a nearby church, for help. Then she drove the older man to Virginia Beach General Hospital for medical treatment.
``He was in pain,'' she says.
Santos never saw the man again. When she returned to the hospital the next morning, he was gone.
Later that day, Santos returned to the convenience store with more food, but found no one there.
The next day, as she kneaded and shaped the dough for the round loaves of Portuguese bread she bakes each day for her family, Santos ``kept thinking about the old man'' and again ``heard the Holy Spirit talking'' to her.
When the loaves had finished baking, she wrapped two of them and returned to the spot on Virginia Beach Boulevard. Again, she found no one there, but on her way, Santos had spotted another man sitting in front of the Virginia Beach Social Services building. She stopped and asked whether he had seen the men she had fed two days earlier.
He hadn't. The man then explained to Santos how he, too, was homeless.
``I said to him, `Believe in the Lord. We will pray together.' '' Then Santos fed him.
Each day afterward, Santos returned to the site with home-cooked meals, feeding the homeless on picnic tables along the west side of the building.
``The next day there were three. The next day, five. The next day, seven. The next day, 11,'' Santos recalls, her brown eyes sparkling with energy. ``Then one day, there was not enough food for everybody.''
Santos didn't let numbers defeat her. Every day for the next six months she cooked up pots of her soup and baked loaves of bread for the homeless. They came to expect her each evening.
At times, though, the project overwhelmed Santos.
``Some days I would cry when I came home,'' she says. ``I'd think to myself, `how am I going to do all this?' ''
Two weeks into the project, Santos again saw the young man she had sent to the Open Door Chapel.
``He looked clean and his face shone,'' Santos recalls with a smile. ``He'd gotten a job as a dishwasher, and they'd found him a place to live.
``He told the other homeless who were there that we had prayed with him and his life had been changed. Everyone listened. Even the young ones who sometimes don't want to hear about the Lord.''
Santos, a member of the Rock Church, has continued her Samaritan service almost single-handedly. Recently, though, she has been helped by Elizabeth Weech and Norma Vanverveldt.
Santos met Weech through her work as a part-time phone counselor for the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Vanverveldt attends Rock Church.
Santos also relies on her family's support.
Her husband, Frank, cleans the kitchen after his wife loads the food into their van. Sometimes he climbs aboard and helps serve.
Daughter Annie, 12, and son Michael also help their mother, and Santos' neighbor, Fatima Furr, bakes cakes for the project.
Santos has dubbed her ministry ``Love and Care for the Homeless'' and has applied for nonprofit status. She hopes to obtain funds to buy two homes where she can feed and provide overnight shelter to the homeless.
``I need two cheap houses - one for men, one for women,'' she says.
For now, though, she has her hands full cooking and serving.
Typical ingredients in a pot of Santos' soup are a ``big bag of beans,'' a meaty bone and plenty of vegetables and pasta. ``They love it when I make that,'' she says.
``This is good, yes ma'am,'' echoed MacKinley Boone, digging into a big plateful of rice and beans on a recent Friday. ``They always cook beautiful meals,'' said the 40-year-old homeless man between mouthfuls.
Francine Elk, 69, a retired secretary from New York City who recently found herself homeless on Virginia Beach streets, was equally appreciative: ``These are very good beans and rice.''
Santos has fed as many as 40 people on a given night although the crowds average much smaller.
In the course of a year, she has assisted dozens of people in other ways. Some have gone into Rock Church's Nehemiah program, a six-month, structured residential effort aimed at changing lives. The program works, according to two men now part of the project.
Kenneth Bearden, 18, and John Maggard, 32, praise the program. They were directed to Rock Church by Santos.
Bearden dropped out of high school in 10th grade and eventually became homeless. While roaming the streets, Bearden injured his leg and was on crutches when police directed him to the city's shelter program. It was there that Bearden met Santos and decided to enter the Nehemiah program.
When Santos first started talking to Bearden about the Bible, he was resistant.
``He'd say, `I don't want to hear about that,' '' Santos says. But now, a month into the Rock Church program, Bearden doesn't go anywhere without his Bible.
Bearden doesn't care if people make fun of him for reading the Bible, he says. He hopes to become an evangelist himself.
Maggard is Bearden's roommate in a Nehemiah apartment off South Plaza Trail.
``Being homeless is almost like going to Vietnam,'' says Maggard. ``It's like you are shell shocked afterward.''
Maggard, a carpenter by trade, has been at Nehemiah for four weeks. He had used the city's winter shelter program for two years after being injured in a fall.
The two men are thankful they met Santos.
``I don't care if they are dirty or stinking,'' says Santos of the homeless she helps. ``I hug them anyway.''
Santos, who claims to have experienced two miraculous healings, believes that the old man whose plight inspired her efforts was sent by God.
``I don't know where he is,'' she says, ``but I believe the Lord is doing this.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
MORT FRYMAN
Staff
For a year, Maria Santos has been on a personal mission to help and
feed Virginia Beach homeless people, such as Graham Hobbs.
KEYWORDS: INDIGENT HOMELESS SAMARITAN by CNB