Sheltering Souls

Saints and sinners walk the same streets and sometimes the blessed are hard to find. But, across Los Angeles, several people have dedicated their lives to finding the silent ones who live under freeways, hugging the toothpick bodies that sleep in stinky tents, and feeding the souls who, even after all this, still believe in God. Every day at 10 a.m., Billy Soto packs his gray van with sandwiches, juice, hot chicken and rice and drives through downtown Los Angeles to feed the homeless. His ministry, funded in part by the Los Angeles International Dream Center, is called Under the Bridge, named for places where he makes most of his stops.

Soto said he worries that with the arrival of the Democratic National Convention, homeless people will be swept off the streets, tossed to a place where he won’t be able to find them.

On alternating Saturdays, members of the Highways and Byways outreach program minister to poor and homeless in the Crenshaw district. The program is associated with the Crenshaw Christian Center. Every Sunday, Young Nak Presbyterian Church, the largest Korean church in Southern California, feeds the homeless and holds a service in a parking lot in skid row. “Mother” Pauline Jackson, a 74-year-old homeless woman, is one of the regulars and the heart of the service. “I get up every Sunday, read my Bible, then come here. They provide that stability we need in our lives,” she says.