Early Sunday morning March 8, a little corner of the parking lot at Nativity Catholic Church in Burke swiftly fills with cars stuffed to the brim with food and volunteers.
The air is soon filled with conversation and laughter, as the volunteers count and swap boxes of donations: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, boiled eggs, bananas, baked potatoes, bagels, cases of water bottles, even work gloves, toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
The donation caravans are part of No Hands But Yours, a Nativity ministry devoted to serving the homeless and those in need in Northern Virginia and Washington. Every Sunday, volunteers meet at the parish, split the donations evenly, then drive their separate ways: one car headed to the nation’s capital, the others to spots throughout Northern Virginia.
The mission is simple: find the homeless or those in need on the streets, and give them food and words of encouragement.
After the vans are loaded, volunteer John Rubino calls all to gather for a quick prayer. All the volunteers then huddle and do a handstack before breaking with the cheer, “No Hands But Yours!”
At McPherson Square in downtown Washington, volunteer Jim Housel pulls a van filled with donations up to three women. As soon as Housel parks, Nikki Nelson, Tanya Cooper and Elaine Clarke all leap into action. They set up a table, load it with donations, and set up two dispensers of coffee and hot chocolate. A line forms around the block as the four volunteers help distribute sandwiches, water bottles, bananas, bagels and hand sanitizer to homeless men and women. Housel rapidly takes coffee orders, mixing in cream and sugar. “You make the best coffee, sir,” one man says.
Another man approaches Housel, asking for a water bottle. With the last water bottle case just emptied, Housel searches through his bags, and finds a spare bottle. “Miracles every day,” he chuckles. A younger man, Chris, takes a cup of coffee and shares that he is originally from Michigan and lost his government benefits. For the meantime, he’s stuck in Washington. “All I can do is pray to God,” he said.
Nelson, Cooper and Clarke were all formerly homeless. Now, they spend their spare time trying to help others get off the streets.
“I remember a time when I was in this situation and that people helped me,” Clarke said. “You have to give those blessings back in return.”
Driving back to Nativity, Housel reflects on the many people he’s met through No Hands But Yours. Over the years, he had developed a rapport with a young man, Josh, and even helped him save for a bus ticket to go visit his sister. During the March 8 visit, Josh had told Housel he bought his ticket and would be leaving in a month.
No Hands But Yours visits Washington on Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays, serving between 80 and 100 people. On trips throughout Northern Virginia, volunteers stop in Shirlington, Arlington, Falls Church and Annandale, where they serve 30-60 people.
The ministry’s dedicated founder, Manuel Ponciano, has been ministering to the homeless since the 1980s. It all started with bringing food to the homeless on his lunch break or distributing coffee. Several decades later, Father Richard B. Martin, late pastor of Nativity, helped Ponciano start an official ministry to serve the homeless. Since then, Ponciano has continued to lead the ministry, driving the streets of Northern Virginia and Washington and searching for people to serve.
At first, he started with a few loyal volunteers. Then Rubino created a Sign-Up Genius with a list of donations needed and open time slots for service opportunities. Now, No Hands But Yours has never suffered from a lack of donations and boasts more than 115 volunteers, including parishioners from St. Bernadette Church in Springfield, Holy Spirit Church in Annandale, and St. Raymond of Peñafort Church in Springfield. The effort has gone interfaith as well, drawing Jewish and Muslim volunteers. Even several seminarians studying at The Catholic University of America in Washington joined in the effort, hosting a similar No Hands But Yours event last December.
Kids help out, too. According to Rubino, some parish families bring their kids to minister to the homeless. For other families, the Sign-Up Genius comes in handy, so parents can make service a family effort by preparing sandwiches or other food donations.
But changing dynamics in Washington and Northern Virginia have thrown a curveball at the ministry. “We had two major tent cities in McPherson, and then one over by Constitution Avenue,” Rubino said. The local government “shut down both those sites.” When the homeless scattered, Ponciano took to the streets, driving around to find where they were headed. Many took refuge by Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. “That’s another spot we’ve been hitting probably over the last six months,” Rubino said. “Tents are very hard to see now.”
The surge in immigration enforcement detentions and arrests has impacted the ministry’s operations in Northern Virginia. “With a lot of the crackdowns with ICE, we haven’t seen as many (people),” Rubino said. “I think a lot of the folks we serve in Northern Virginia are Latin American folks coming from Venezuela and South America.”
The ministry does more than minister to the homeless with a partnership with a Panera Bread franchise in West Springfield. Every Saturday and Sunday night, the franchise donates bread, which the volunteers take to a food distribution center in Falls Church.
Rubino said the ministry has had a profound impact on his spiritual life. “For us, it’s kind of a Teresa of Kolkata experience, of seeing Jesus in their eyes,” he said. He gave the example of ministering to a man who had a rough appearance and a scraggly beard. “You could definitely tell that he was having some trouble,” Rubino said. “Our eyes met, and he had a beard, very dirty face, ragged hair, but he had the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen. And I felt at that point, that’s the gift that the Lord is giving me.”
As founder Ponciano set down a box of sandwiches he said that serving the homeless comes down to just that: “You see Jesus in others.”
Find out more
Learn more about No Hands But Yours on “The Nativity Podcast” at nativityburke.org/the-nativity-podcast, or go to nativityburke.org/service/no-hands-but-yours.
