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Jan martinez was only 26 when a stranger broke into her home, put a knife to her throat, and raped her. Suddenly her safe little world changed forever. "After that night, I was terrified to answer the phone or get out of the shower. Nothing took away my consuming emotional pain," Jan says two-and-a-half decades after her encounter with the never-caught man who brutalized her.
So Jan did something she never would have done before the rape: She turned to God. "I'd been hostile to Christianity in the past, so it was nothing short of desperation for me to consider finding help in a church," explains Jan. "What I found after questioning who God was and studying the Bible was a merciful Father who wept over sin and death, but who allowed life's consequences to draw people to him. I found my Savior."
Fast forward 25 years from that fateful night to a recent Thursday morning at Westminster Presbyterian Church, located in one of Spokane, Washington's poorest neighborhoods—an area residents refer to as "Felony Flats" for its high crime rate and low income level.
Many of the 40 or so homeless women who enter Christ Kitchen (CK), the church's unpretentious dining room, know little about Jan, its energetic 50-year-old director, except one thing—Jan loves Jesus. And that love is at the heart of Jan's unconventional method of providing what many impoverished women need most—a way to make a little extra money and gain emotional and spiritual healing.
She does so by paying some 125 poor and/or homeless women the Washington State minimum wage of $7.16 an hour to assemble gift baskets that rival those found in trendy kitchen boutiques. The baskets, stuffed with calico and raffia-bedecked dry-food products, are marketed to local churches and via the Internet. Buyers know that not only do their purchases employ women in poverty, but they also deliver tremendous taste and quality under playful product names such as "Prayerful Pintos" (locally grown pinto beans and flavorings that make a great filling for tortilla wraps), or "Heavenly Blue Corn Hotcakes" (a slightly crunchy pancake mix that's sky blue due to the ground blue corn from which it's made).
Any woman who arrives at Christ Kitchen promptly at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday mornings "clean, sober, and ready to work" earns a day's wages. Often that makes the difference between a full refrigerator and an empty one. Jan's hour-long Bible study—which she also pays them to attend at the start of the day—makes doubly sure women leave Christ Kitchen richer than when they arrived.
The idea for christ kitchen came to jan in a fit of exasperation one day in 1997. A counselor in private practice, Jan and her husband, Felix, a successful pathologist, were hooked on serving the poor globally. But Jan began realizing "the mission field is between my two feet." While still maintaining her counseling practice, she began donating counseling time at Christ Clinic, a free medical facility in Felony Flats. What she found there startled her. "Women in low-income areas of Spokane told tales of rape and battering no different than those of the women I met on a short-term missions trip outside Katmandu," explains Jan. "It may be obvious, but the reason I relate to the women at the Kitchen is because the trauma I experienced before coming to the Lord is similar to their own."
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