'Nobody should go hungry'
Grants center helps the destitute

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Ted Pino is blind. He used to drink and was homeless. Then he started going to the Community Outreach Center in Grants.

Pino has been sober for more than two years now, has a place to live, is on Social Security disability, has a caregiver and has become a Christian — all because of the outreach efforts of the staff at the center.

“I got tired of living on the streets, so I started going to the center,” he said. “I used to be picked up on the streets by the police van and was living in the bottle.”

He attributes becoming sober to going to a “Celebrate Recovery” program every Friday night at the center and being able to eat lunches there five days a week.

“God has really changed my life. Helen (Lortz) is my minister, and when my caregiver can’t get me there, she picks me up,” he said.

Lortz, who is the minister for the Church of the Nazarene in Milan, and who has a chaplaincy-based ministry, organizes things for the board of directors for the center.

The board includes representatives from several area churches: High Country Western Fellowship, Immanuel Baptist, Central Baptist and the Nazarene church.

The center is the only one in Grants that feeds the homeless a lunch on a daily basis. There are at least two in Gallup that provide free meals to the homeless as well. None force religion upon the people who are in need and hungry.

At the center in Grants, free lunch is provided Monday through Friday at 12:15 p.m., following a 15-minute period of devotions, she said.

On Wednesday mornings there is a Bible study, and the recovery program is at 8 p.m. every Friday night. The program follows a dinner at 6 p.m. and an hourlong worship service at 7 p.m.

Floyd McErnie, the wrestling coach at Grants High School, volunteers for making and serving lunch. He said four years ago he had job offers from Gallup, Grants and Albuquerque, and God and a flip of the coin led him where he is today.

“I help because there are people who are hungry, not just physically, but spiritually as well,” he said. “A lot of people are down and out and some churches don’t want them there because they are not clean.

“We give them a place to go and the center is not just for the homeless either,” he said. “Everyone is welcome.”

The center started in 2003 because church organizers saw a need in town. The Rev. Garland Moore, of Immanuel Baptist Church in Milan, was the first to recognize the need and begin to do something about it.

Originally breakfast, lunch and dinner were served, but after a few months it was a changed to lunch only because there was not enough help in the mornings or at night.

Today, between 20-22 people eat lunch every day.
Gallup-based outreach

Catholic Charities, 506 W. U.S. Route 66, offers a “winter months” only breakfast “drop in” program, said Sister Kathleen Driscoll, of the Daughters of Charity.

Breakfast is served Monday through Friday from 6:30-8 a.m. she said.

“Each morning about 40-45 men and women come for breakfast until March or April, when the weather becomes warmer.

“The people come out of the shelters early in the morning and we give them coffee, a warm place and something to eat. As long as the food holds out they are welcome to seconds, as long as everyone gets firsts,” she said.

Casa San Martin is also an organization that provides meals for the homeless, but the sister who talked to the Independent asked not to be interviewed, as well as not to use her name.

“We depend on the providence of God for everything,” she said.

Donations: Lortz at (505) 287-4464 or Sister Kathleen at
(505) 722-4407.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.