Needy East Side church shares what it has with poor

Pastor, volunteers take weekly meals to homeless and hungry

The homeless and hungry flock to Redeemer’s Praise Church on Pine Street, where Pastor Shetigho Agbuke offers abundant blessings, physical as well as spiritual.

Each Saturday morning, they arrive to receive food from her pantry, pulling grocery carts and driving cars that have seen better days. Chilly air swept through the open church doors on a recent weekend, as Agbuke prayed for the gathering in the sanctuary before they filed to the pantry line.

“They have a box of food for the week,” she said. “That is my desire.”

Antonio “Tony Baloney” Hernandez, 47, was among more than 60 people who visited the old church on the East Side this Saturday.

Bundled for the cold weather, he pulled his cart packed with food for his mother, his father and himself. He trudged along the asphalt road as he did two years ago, when he crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico to Laredo.

He thanks the Lord for his life in Texas, but without proper documentation, jobs have been hard to come by, he said. For the past five months, Hernandez has relied on the kindness of the pastor and her volunteers — and his faith.

“She’s a good woman,” he said. “And I’m blessed from my Big Daddy. He always has my back.”

For the past eight years, the Nigerian-born pastor has ministered to her congregation and, with a caravan of volunteers, fed the homeless in and around downtown.

Many in her congregation suffer from drug addiction and poverty. Some have slept under brid-

Kin Man Hui / Staff photographer Pastor Shetigho Agbuke, left, of Redeemer’s Praise Church, hands a package of cookies to a woman near Houston and Frio streets, part of a weekly tradition of providing meals to those in need.