HOUSTON CHRONICLE ARCHIVES 

Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: THU 08/17/95
Section: a
Page: 34
Edition: 3 STAR

Sanctuary for the homeless/Methodist church offers breakfast, showers, medical care

By JAMES ROBINSON
Staff

Daybreak is the appropriate name for a new homeless service because that is when the homeless make their way to the former parsonage of St. John's United Methodist Church.

In the modest frame house, nestled between the Pierce Elevated and the church itself on Crawford in downtown Houston, about 35 homeless people find breakfast, showers, laundry facilities and medical care each day.

The program is run and funded by the church, whose membership has grown in three years from nine members to 1,100, said associate pastor Rudy Rasmus .

The program's patrons may have spent the previous night in a shelter, but chances are they bedded on a sidewalk.

That was the case Wednesday, the program's official opening, with Joel de la Garza, 29, who said he's been homeless for about two months.

"I was supposed to be at the Star of Hope (shelter), but they were full," he said.

Antonio Evans slept outside Star of Hope for two months, but he's since found a place to live and a part-time job at Daybreak in charge of the laundry and shower facilities.

Now he's going back to get his GED and is receiving tutoring from the church.

Rasmus said his church's congregation dwindled because of the suburbanizing force that caused downtown to decline.

But now the church has "embraced a vision to meet the needs of the homeless without physical houses and the homeless without church houses," he said.

About 20 percent of the congregation is or has been homeless, Rasmus said, and others come from as far as Katy and The Woodlands.

"They have a certain sensibility to urban life and find themselves comfortable with this church and this environment," he said.

The parsonage was repaired with a $30,000 donation from Memorial Drive United Methodist Church.

Operations are funded by St. John's collection plate, Rasmus said.