The kitchen in the San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen feels about one power of magnitude hotter than it does outside on West Jonathan Street.
Volunteers, who for Monday’s meal were from the Holy Cross Catholic Church’s Oasis of Peace Youth Group, carried around large pots of spaghetti and bubbling sauce while teens who were volunteering as part of a confirmation project stood behind trays of garlic bread and waited for the lunchtime rush.
The crowd who came in for the free meal that day included families, children, senior citizens and single men. Some of the visitors paused before a statute of San Martin de Porres and prayed before going through the line. Another man talked about watching people canoe that weekend while he grabbed some fruit punch in a McDonald’s cup.
Fernando Martinez, after cleaning off a plate of spaghetti, said he has been coming to the soup kitchen for about three weeks after some of his family members recommended it to him. He doesn’t have a job. He’s broke. But in that three weeks he said he has come to appreciate seeing the different families eating there and the friendliness shown to him by the volunteers.
The meals help him, he said.
“I can go back out and kick some butt,” Martinez said.
The soup kitchen is in its 19th year, said Suzan Roybal, one of its founding members. According to Roybal and her sisters Theodora Valdez and Erlinda Quintana, the whole project can be credited to a 1989 pilgrimage they took to Medjugorje, in former Yugoslavia, to see an apparition of the Virgin Mary who was said to have been appearing there.
“We knew we were going to come back different,” Valdez said.
Valdez said she remembered sitting in Saint James Church during one of the appearances in a choir loft. Valdez said she did not see the apparition, but she remembers three bright flashes of light and a bird that entered the church during the appearance. Valdez said they wanted to learn from the pilgrimage what their mission in life should be. When they came home to New Mexico, they decided to open the soup kitchen to feed the hungry, to visit the homebound and bless homes.
Roybal said she made the pilgrimage during a part of her life she described as chaotic. She said she wanted a sense of direction and to find peace.
And she feels as though she’s attained peace, though it would be difficult to tell from the work the soup kitchen requires. She said the kitchen requires planning days in advance of each meal and with teams of volunteers, simply cooking the meal is about two hours of work. She said the kitchen has large pieces of cookware that include a 10-gallon soup pot, which is getting difficult for some of the kitchen’s senior volunteers to move.
Twenty teams of volunteers are each assigned a day to cook and serve meals to the people who come through its doors each lunchtime. On Monday, Roybal was searching through the kitchen’s walk-in freezer with two other volunteers, who were planning the following day’s meal. Boxes of donated food stood in stacks around them. Frozen cakes topped off random stacks of food throughout the freezer.
“We’ve got cakes coming out of our ears,” Roybal said, commenting on desserts for that week.
The sisters draw on about 100 volunteers to keep the kitchen running, Roybal said. They were helped in organizing by the Española Valley Ministerial Alliance, which assisted in finding volunteers and donations of food through such places as the Food Depot in Santa Fe and local food markets.
At first, the soup kitchen served three meals a week, but over the past seven years the kitchen has served meals every weekday, in addition to packing boxes of food for delivery. Roybal said the number of people the kitchen can serve is growing despite increasing demand from the community and problems in the kitchen’s history such as its first building, a converted dance hall, burning down.
“We’re up and doing well, thanks to God,” Roybal said.
But there is more demand, Roybal said. When the kitchen began, volunteers would feed between 50 and 80 people per day. Today, that number has grown to about 135.
“That tells us the need is increasing,” Roybal said.
Most of the kitchen’s clients come from Española’s low-income communities, Roybal said. She said about 60 percent of the people who come through the kitchen live near the kitchen around North Railroad Avenue. These people cross demographics, according to Roybal. They include families, drug addicts and people who have lost their jobs.
Everyone eats, no questions asked, she said.
“What I know is there’s a lot of need without the economy being so bad,” Roybal said.
Valdez said because of that, the community needs to do more to help people. She called on the Española region to build homeless shelters and find ways to teach people new skills they can use to find jobs.
“It would be nice if there were a shelter for the homeless,” she said.
Valdez and Roybal each said many of the people who come through their kitchen are willing to help. Roybal remembered one family who responded to a box of donated food by offering to help clean the kitchen.
When she was asked what she’s learned from the kitchen’s benefactors over the years, Valdez said the people she served were humble.
People who have been volunteering with the soup kitchen for years are trying to pass that attitude along.
The youth group was led Monday by Felice Gurule, who has been volunteering at the kitchen for the last nine years. She said at first she would make some of the food at home but eventually was able to get everything she needed to serve a meal directly from the pantry. The kitchen hits a range of meals, Roybal said. Thanks to donations, the kitchen can serve everything from hot dogs to sandwiches, salads, enchiladas and Frito pies.
Gurule is now getting people to join her in volunteering. Gurule said she thinks it’s important for confirmation students to learn how to take care of their community. Samantha Griego, Kimberly Herrera and Nicole Herrera spent the morning cutting fruit, toasting garlic bread and setting up the lunch line. Nicole Herrera said they have been volunteering at the kitchen for about three years.
Gurule said her son, Ricky Sandoval, 10, has also been helping around the kitchen since he was 3. His mother remembers seeing him years ago wearing oversized gloves and walking between the tables asking people, “You wanna donut?” then tossing a donut on their plates. On Monday he was handing out dishes of fresh-cut fruit taken from one of the kitchen’s many crates in the cooler.
Roybal laughed when asked if the soup kitchen, with the planning and work it requires, has helped her find peace. She said by working to serve others, the volunteers bring in more people who are also willing to volunteer. Due to family medical problems, Roybal said she’s had to “step back” from volunteering over the past two years. But in that time, she said it seems as though the kitchen is running itself. On Monday she credited a volunteer, Mona Romero, for helping her out during this time. Romero does everything from cleaning to buying things from the store with the kitchen’s petty cash, Roybal said.
“Here on Earth is nothing but chaos,” Roybal said. “But the thing is when you do things for God and do it with all your heart, you feel gratified and positive things come out of it. And I’ll be darned, through a good example, other people follow you.”
Valdez said her faith tells her she serves the Lord by working for other people. Quintana said she has learned humility over the years and gets inspiration from helping at the kitchen.
“We started out to serve them,” she said. “They are beautiful people.”
The kitchen’s donation jar sits besides the saint’s statue with a sign stating any help is appreciated. Roybal said the kitchen is always looking for volunteers, as well as donations of food and money. Anyone interested can call Roybal at 753-4956.