The Father’s Heart

In addition to contributions of financial support and gas cards, the ministry seeks donations of clothing, such as jeans, socks, sweaters, sweatshirts, children’s clothing, hats, gloves, coats and new undergarments, and toiletries, such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo,
deodorant, soap and washcloths.
Phone: (585) 647-6746.
Email: Thefathersheartroc.
Web: http://www.thefathersheartroc.org/
With some groceries in hand, Rafeal Torres receives a hot meal from volunteers at the Father’s Heart Ministry Mobile Soup Kitchen. The Father’s Heart Ministry is Rochester’s Mobile Soup Kitchen for Christ. On Friday evening, the bus parked at North Clinton Ave and Oakman Street to pass out warm food, clothing, groceries, and the Gospel to Rochester’s homeless and those in need.

A cold, stinging rain was falling on a Friday night recently as Russ Loria grabbed a microphone and began to deliver the gospel at a street corner in northeast Rochester.
“Come on over here, guys,” he said with a sweep of his arm to a group of the down and out — mostly men — who had gathered for free food being given out from a bus parked at North Clinton Avenue and Oakman Street, in the shadow of Los Flamboyanes low-income housing project. “We want to pray for you guys in the name of Jesus.”
For the next 10 minutes, as the rain changed to sleet and then to hail, Loria spoke in the glow of a spotlight fastened to the side of the bus. He told the group that Jesus Christ had saved him from a life of drug addiction and despair and that it would happen to them, too, if they put their trust in Jesus.
“Do not be deceived,” Loria told them. “Religion cannot save you. Going to church cannot save you. Doing good things cannot save you. Only Jesus Christ can save you from yourselves and from your sins. My friends, there is only one way to heaven, and that is through the cross of Christ.”
As the weather worsened, the men shuffled back and forth on their feet and thrust their hands deeper into their coat pockets. Some were growing impatient when Loria concluded with a prayer and told them to help themselves to bread and pastry set out on tables and hot soup, coffee and steaming, piled-high ham-and-cheese sandwiches being dispensed from a serving window in the side of the bus.
Loria and his wife, Anne, are directors of The Father’s Heart, the only mobile soup kitchen serving the poor in Rochester. Three times a week, regardless of the weather, they and a rotating cadre of volunteers set up their converted bus to offer free food, clothing, toiletries and the Gospel to the least and the lost.
Although some of the people the ministry serves are homeless, most live in and around the housing projects where the bus sets up. The ranks of the poor are growing; according to a study last year by the Brookings Institution, the number of people living below the poverty line grew by 6 percent from 2000 to 2009 in Rochester and by 40 percent in the suburbs.
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While there is not necessarily a direct correlation with poverty, that growth trend is mirrored by the ranks of the unemployed in the Rochester area, which increased to 38,800 as of December from 26,900 in December 2007, the month the recession started, according to the state Labor Department. That’s an increase of 44 percent, and it doesn’t include people who have dropped out of the labor force, the so-called discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job.
There is a clear need among those served by The Father’s Heart.
Since the ministry began in June 2011, Loria estimates that the bus has dispensed 12,000 meals made by hand from food that was totally donated. “Except maybe for a few hot dogs we had to buy now and then,” he said. “That’s the power of the Lord.”
Jose Maldonado, 36, came for the food but listened to Loria’s message. Although he said he is not a Christian, he said he appreciates the ministry.
“It’s good,” he said. “It’s really good for the people. Those people over there,” he said, motioning to a young couple, “they don’t have any bread in their house, and they wouldn’t have any if they didn’t come here.”
The Father’s Heart began as a ministry of Koinonia Fellowship, a non-denominational, Bible-believing church in East Rochester, with the goal of eventually becoming an independent entity with its own tax-exempt status. It achieved independence last November and has filed paperwork to become tax-exempt.
The ministry depends on volunteers and donations from its partnerships with a dozen area fellowships, as well as food and paper products given by Wegmans, Tops, Palmer’s Meat & Seafood, Panera Bread and Samaritan’s Harvest, a Christian food bank.
Volunteer John Profetta, who was living in a Salvation Army shelter when he encountered the bus during one of its regular stops at the Liberty Pole in downtown Rochester, said the ministry rekindled in him a love for God that he had allowed to be quenched.
“I’m ministering now to people I used to do drugs with,” said Profetta, 55. “The old man in me is dead.”

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Loria, 46, a plumber by trade, fell into a destructive lifestyle that included 16 years of addiction to crack cocaine. At the end of his rope in 1997, he said he was saved from that life when he received Christ as his Lord and Savior.
Two years later he went to New York City, where he served as a street missionary for six years before returning to Rochester and meeting and marrying Anne, 34. With other volunteers, they ministered to residents of the Cadillac Hotel, a downtown facility where Monroe County frequently makes placements of the homeless.
Inspired by a mobile soup kitchen ministry in New York, he believed he was called to establish one in Rochester.
In November 2010, Koinonia Fellowship, where Loria is a deacon, put down $4,500 at an auction to buy a 5-year-old Lift Line diesel bus with 92,000 miles on it. Over the next seven months, with several thousand dollars more advanced by the church, Loria and two friends converted the bus into a soup kitchen by adding running water, a refrigerator, exterior low-voltage spotlights, a serving window, a steam table, a hot plate, a gasoline generator, a new gray-and-blue paint job featuring the city’s skyline, and a verse from the Old Testament (Isaiah 6:8) written on the rear door: “Who will go for Us?”
The ministry secured vendor and food permits from the City of Rochester and the county Health Department and marshaled volunteers from Koinonia and other churches to take the bus on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays to low-income housing projects and street corners from Emerson Street and Fulton Avenue in northwest Rochester to the Pines of Perinton housing project in southeastern Monroe County.
The ministry, however, could have died aborning. Just as renovation of the bus was under way, Loria lost his job and had to decide whether to continue. He and his wife prayed, concluded that Loria’s job loss was a spiritual attack aimed at stopping the ministry, then stepped out in faith.
What did they learn from the experience?
“Trust,” he said. “If the Lord wants you to do something, He’ll empower you to do it and He’s going to provide all your needs.”

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During the day, Loria, who is still unemployed, makes his rounds to pick up donations of food, clothing, paper products and disposable serving needs that are stored in a city house donated to the ministry. On outreach days, he and Profetta prepare the hot food to be served that night. What’s on the menu depends on what is donated; soups of all kinds and pasta and sauce are two staples.
When the bus pulls up to an outreach, the generator is unloaded and started to provide power to keep food warm and light the bus, while folding tables are set up to hold bread (300 to 600 loaves a week), bagels, doughnuts, pretzels, potato chips, cupcakes, strudel and other pastries for recipients to take home. When Loria finishes delivering the Gospel, those items are snapped up quickly.
The ultimate goal of the Lorias is to provide food for the spirit. They and volunteers will pass out Christian tracts, answer questions and pray with those who request it.
But they have no illusions that many people who come to their outreaches are seeking food for their bodies only. Still, they said the Gospels show that Jesus had the same issue when he fed the multitudes.
“Our heart is to share the love of Christ with them,” Anne Loria said.