San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Sharing food, blankets, blessings
East Side pastor extends her ministry to the streets to uplift San Antonio’s homeless
Pastor Shetigho Nakpodia bestowed blessings upon Mario Martinez’s soul in the blistering summer heat of a Texas afternoon.
A stream of cars rolled past the curb as Martinez leaned forward and bowed his head. He pressed a ball cap to his chest as the prayer warrior knelt and told him to be encouraged.
Passersby stole glances at the woman, clad in a greenflowered print dress with a matching head covering wrapped around rust-colored braids. She extended the same sentiment to Martinez’s friend, a man with a long, gray beard who sat against the base of a thick palm tree on Columbia Square near Marbach Road.
The sun-weathered Martinez, 56, and his friend sat among their worldly possessions, including a backpack, a radio and miniature Hot Wheel cars wedged between blades of grass.
“I know my God loves you,” Nakpodia said as Martinez wiped tears from his eyes.
“Not everybody will take the time to do this,” Martinez said. “It means a lot to us. We appreciate people like this.”
For the past 11 years, Nakpodia, 67, has extended her ministry from Redeemer’s Praise Church on the East Side to the unsheltered who live on narrow downtown streets and wide-open spaces of the suburbs. She’s one of the city’s good Samaritans who travel the streets of San Antonio to feed, clothe and uplift the homeless.
“I’m preaching Jesus to them,” the pastor said. “He died for them, so they will know they are somebody. They need someone to love them and help sort out their lives.”
As the pandemic spread, Nakpodia wore a protective mask and continued her mission. She never closed the church or stopped caring for people sleeping outside in the elements.
Data collected from street outreach activities in 2020 indicate that more than 2,000 people were living in spaces not meant for human habitation, such as abandoned buildings, cars, sidewalks and parks.
“I love people,” Nakpodia said. “I don’t like people to suffer. The poor, sometimes they don’t have a helper. They feel dejected and forsaken. We just want to help get them off the streets. Life just happened to them that way, and we want
to help to get them on their feet.”
Faith always has been essential to Nakpodia, who is originally from Nigeria. Her maternal grandmother raised her, the oldest of 12 children, to love the Lord.
Her father, Laggy Nakpodia, wanted the best for his daughters. During a visit to England for the Taylor Woodrow Construction company, he met female secretaries and administrators who impressed him with their business acumen and knowledge. He saw that women could do more than have children and stay at home. He wanted that life for his daughters and sent them to the best schools.
That love and her faith sustained Nakpodia as she attended St. Maria Goretti, a secondary school paid for by her father. The school was in Benin City, Nigeria, in a region torn apart by civil war in the late 1960s over the breakaway state of Biafra.
Nakpodia recalled having to step over dead combatants on the road as she walked to the chapel. At night, she sought cover with classmates under bunk beds during heavy shelling.
Nakpodia eventually graduated from the University of Lagos with a bachelor’s in psychology. She worked at Mobil Oil for 12 years until she left to join her husband in San Antonio. After 25 years of marriage, they divorced. Still, her four children, Mudia, 35, Ovigwe, 34, Sune, 28, and Norie, 33, carry on the lessons she taught them and often work by her side.
She was ordained as a minister
in 1994 and traveled from church to church as an evangelist for 10 years. In 2004, she started her first church in a suite on Harry Wurzbach Road.
In 2010, Nakpodia bought the old church at 107 Pine St. with her savings. Since then, the doors of Redeemer’s Praise Church have been open to transients, low-income families, prostitutes and drug dealers.
Every Saturday morning, volunteers gather in the church kitchen and prepare 250 to
300 meals. Three crews deliver the meals to homeless individuals downtown at the corner of Pine and Iowa streets, the Salvation Army on Nolan Street, Travis Park, Central Library and the Haven for
Hope parking lot. Smaller deliveries are made to encampments along Walzem, Wurzbach and Perrin Beitel roads.
Not long after Nakpodia bought the church building, the pastor and the congregation noticed a burnt odor coming from the sanctuary walls. Church members removed drywall panels to find the wooden walls steeped in smoke and soot — damage from a long-ago fire. When they removed the drop ceiling, the remains of dead birds, cats, raccoons and snakes fell on the floor.
Three years ago, friends, colleagues, and neighbors formed a group to refurbish the church. Word of Nakpodia’s work spread, inspiring individuals and church groups to volunteer for her cause. Retirees installed two bathrooms, two sinks and a water heater in the back of the building. People sent donations for
improvements and repairs.
Philanthropist Kym Rapier presented Nakpodia with a $500,000 grant for upgrades to the church and construction of a new building to be called the Love Community Center..
In 2018, businesswoman La Juana Chambers Lawson heard about Nakpodia’s church improvement project and joined the building development committee.
“I fell in love with her and her work,” said Lawson, 33. “However, I could support her vision. I wanted to be part of that. Her ministry truly nourishes our souls. She is a beacon of light for our community.”
Nakpodia often sits in an office chair on her altar to anoint people searching for absolution and affirmation. Recently, as volunteers prepared meals, Alex Menuzo, 50, stopped to eat and look through racks of donated clothes. Before leaving, he knelt and asked the pastor for a blessing to get him through the day.
“You are talking to me like I’m somebody,” Menuzo said as Nakpodia dabbed olive oil upon his bowed head.
“You are somebody,” Nakpodia replied.
Pam Espurvoa Allen met Nakpodia six years ago at Bridging the Gap, a forum for community leaders and church pastors. Allen founded Eagles Flight Advocacy & Outreach, a nonprofit that helps refugees, low-income families and those whose children have special needs.
When Allen learned the pastor needed help feeding those in her ministry, Allen added the church to her food pantry delivery route. The nonprofit also donates clothing, shoes, and household goods to Nakpodia’s church.
“This larger-than-life woman has the largest prayers,” said Allen, 57. “Her faith is phenomenal, and wherever she goes, she makes an impression. She’s always giving from her heart.”
In January, Nakpodia drove her pickup to Marbach Road and Southwest Loop 410 to deliver meals, blankets and thick socks to people sleeping outside.
She prayed for Bryan James, 24, who held a cardboard sign that asked for help of any kind. She prayed for Miguel Valle,
20, bundled in a Spider-Man blanket as he sat on a curb just feet from passing traffic. She prayed for a woman asleep on a sidewalk in a nest of blankets. Nakpodia added several blankets to the jumble of quilts, along with a pair of size 9-anda-half sneakers that she’d promised the woman on an earlier visit.
On the day before Father’s Day, an ice-chest packed with 30 meals, clothes and bottles of water jostled in the bed of the pickup as Nakpodia drove along U.S. Highway 90 West. Accompanied by her daughter, Sune, the pastor scanned the roadside for the unsheltered.
She exited on the access road past Military Drive and turned quickly into a gas station parking lot — there were people to help. She knelt and prayed for a bearded man sitting cross-legged in the shade of crepe myrtle trees.
She prayed for Gilbert Juarez, 34, who had visions of better days. As she pressed her hands on his shoulders, he hoped her prayers would bring stability to a new job he’d found.
“Are you a father?” she asked.
Juarez nodded. She handed him a pair of new shirts as Father’s Day gifts.
“It feels good for her to take time for me,” Juarez said. “I appreciate her praying for me.”
Nakpodia surprised a barechested David Jones, 33, halfsitting on a multi-speed bicycle. He rode away with a new baseball cap, shirts and grace from the pastor.
Across the street, one man accepted her gifts, but rebuffed her blessings. Then she and her daughter moved on to hand out the last meals and blessings to Mario Martinez and his friend.
“It’s very genuine,” Sune said. “It doesn’t matter if the whole world followed her. She’d be out here serving and helping people.”