COVER STORY : A Little Bit of Heaven on Earth : Volunteers at churches and synagogues give the best of themselves where it is needed the most. Some see themselves as lay servants of God.

FROM PULPITS THROUGHOUT THE area, the holiday message will go out: Think of the less fortunate, share your blessings, give generously of your time and your pockets.

But some in the Los Angeles religious community need no prodding. They are volunteers--unsung heroes working year-round, doing everything from stuffing envelopes to masterminding food programs for the homeless.

For some, the motivation is feeling useful or assuaging guilt. But others often see themselves as lay servants of God, called by Him to help their communities.

Regardless, their congregations and communities find them indispensable, said Michael Mata, director of the Urban Leadership Institute at Claremont College’s School of Theology, which trains church leaders to revitalize their communities and congregations through the lay community.

Nationwide, almost half of all adults performed at least some volunteer work in 1993, down from 54% in 1989, according to a 1994 Gallup survey, which attributed the slip in part to concerns about the weak economy. Volunteers give an average of 4.2 hours a week, with members of religious organizations more than twice as likely to volunteer than those who have no affiliation, the survey said.

But low-income areas produce the fewest volunteers.

“It’s harder to find volunteers in poor communities because they can’t afford to give up work or they are busy with survival issues,” Mata said. “But ultimately, it’s going to be the rank-and-file (church members) who live out in the world and have ideas about what needs to be done who can make a difference.”

Here are the stories of four local volunteers who are doing just that.

Juana Esther Martinez / ‘An Incredible Spirit’

Unemployed and struggling with cancer, Juana Esther Martinez was seeking a new start when she went to MacArthur Park in the fall of 1992 for what a friend told her would be a meeting about job opportunities. Instead, it turned out to be an Episcopalian service in progress.

“As I approached I saw (the Rev. Philip Lance) raising the (communion) host and I was touched,” Martinez said recently. “I realized it was a Mass and I felt called” by God.

The outdoor service occurred during the early days of Pueblo Nuevo (New Community) Mission, a tiny storefront church now located at 7th and Burlington streets in Westlake. Martinez, a 37-year-old with waist-length black hair, quickly became one of the mission’s top five community leaders and a key player in its steady growth, from zero to 38 families in two years, Lance recalled.

“God has taught me how to walk step by step,” Martinez said through a translator. “When you look at my background, (this work) isn’t something I would have taken on myself.”

Martinez’s youthful face belies the details of a difficult life: She left school when she was 8 years old to clean houses. Later, her husband deserted her, leaving her to raise three children. In her mid-30s, after immigrating to the United States in 1983, she confronted uterine cancer--and subsequent chemotherapy and depression. With the cancer in remission, she now supports an extended family of 10.

Raised Catholic in a small town near Guadalajara, Martinez grew up terrified of priests, believing that it would be a sin for her unordained hands to open the Bible.

Now, under Lance’s guidance, she teaches catechism each Saturday to neighborhood children and dons church robs to help Lance serve the Eucharist on Sundays. “She is an incredible spirit,” Lance said. “She is somebody who wants to get something done for God. It is a wonder how somebody with so little gives so much.”

After working during the day as a janitor, commuting between jobs at a Westside apartment building and a Westlake halfway house, she acts as Lance’s liaison to neighborhood families. Visiting homes, she encourages residents to attend Mass and send their children to catechism. She has brought at least a dozen families into the mission as members.

When the mission opened a thrift shop to raise money, she volunteered hundreds of hours during the first four months organizing, displaying and cleaning merchandise in the store. When the mission created a jobs cooperative, an employee-owned property and landscape maintenance business, she helped Lance select the first contracts, and the employees elected her its first president.

While Martinez assisted during a recent church service, Ruth Miranda listened to a story from the Gospel about a poor widow who gives her last two pennies to the church as an offering to God.

“He might as well be talking about Esther,” said Miranda, a board member for Pueblo Nuevo Development Inc., the mission’s economic development arm. “Her greatest gift is her humility. She’s totally devoted and never asks ‘What do I get for this?’ ”

Martinez spends nearly every free hour volunteering for the church, but says her contribution does not deserve recognition.

“I don’t feel like I do anything,” she said, softly, unable to meet a visitor’s eyes. “I don’t do enough compared to what I have been given.”

Bruce Friedman / ‘A Great Feeling of Accomplishment’

In the cozy dining nook of his spacious Windsor Square home, a basket of fresh bagels and croissants before him, Bruce Friedman sips his second cup of coffee. Less than a mile away at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, scores of homeless line up for food pantry donations--grocery bags of bread and dried milk.

This disturbing contrast inspired Friedman to approach his rabbi six years ago and suggest that the temple become a base for social service programs. Then 38, Friedman, an attorney, was settled with a family and successful in his career and wanted to fulfill what he considered his duty as a Jew to help the less fortunate.

Since 1988, he has volunteered countless hours as president of Hopenet, a multidenominational coalition of mid-Wilshire congregations that, under Friedman’s direction, set up a network of eight food pantries that serve 100,000 meals annually.

More recently, the group has opened Hope West, a 17-unit apartment building on West Street that will house low-income families in the Mid-Wilshire district.

“Homelessness really troubled me. The contrast between the haves and the have-nots was really more than I could bear,” said Friedman in his characteristic low-key manner. “I felt very comfortable in my own life and very uncomfortable with the fact that we had people on the street.”

Fellow Hopenet board members say Friedman has nudged the organization to accomplish more than they had ever dreamed.

“Food is easy to distribute but when Bruce suggested we get into permanent housing, we all thought ‘What about financing? We don’t know anything about development,’ ” recalled Michael Mata, former Hopenet vice president.

“We were all volunteers and didn’t have the expertise. Bruce pushed with perseverance to get a housing commitment.”

Friedman coordinated a partnership with the Los Angeles Community Design Center, which patched together city and state funds and federal tax credits to finance the $3.2-million project. Friedman also convinced Hopenet board members there should be a social worker on staff at the building and found funding for the position.

On a recent Sunday, Friedman toured the apartment building for the first time. “This is great!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands, as he walked through one of the bright units. “It’s across the street from (Queen Anne) park and it’s a great place to live.”

Hopenet is looking for a building to rehabilitate to provide more housing. But Friedman’s long-term goal is to make Hopenet, which is financed with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds and other donations, financially self-sufficient. One way to do that, he said, would be through a thrift shop, and plans to open one are on the drawing board.

Sometimes, he said, volunteer projects take him away from his family too much. Friedman also serves on his temple’s board and is a member of the economic development committee for the Interfaith Coalition to Heal Los Angeles.

“That’s when I say ‘Bruce, we need to talk,’ ” said his wife, Linda, who also volunteers at the temple and her daughters’ schools. Indeed, the couple routinely miss one another two or three nights a week because of volunteer duties, they said.

But Friedman’s Hopenet work comes second only to his family, he said.

“If I’ve done anything in any small way to make someone’s life better,” he said, “that’s a great feeling of accomplishment.”

Sonja Sharp / ‘A Constant Soldier’

Sonja Sharp perches on her chair, motionless as one of her literacy students stands before his classmates to read the week’s lesson. The 46-year-old student, one of 10 in the course, labors to read the simple assignment and Sharp is touched by his effort. She digs a tissue from her purse to dab away tears.

“You made me cry,” she tells Michael Moore, leading the group in applause. “Let’s give him a hand.”

It is this kind of compassion, a sign of her dedication, that has made Sharp a gift to the West Angeles Literacy Empowerment Team, a program of the Jefferson Park-based West Angeles Church of God in Christ, said Gwen Thomas, program coordinator.

“She is a constant soldier,” Thomas said. “She’s energetic and almost as dogmatic about the cause as I am.”

For the past year, Sharp, 47, has been assigned to teach recovering drug and alcohol abusers at Transition House, an all-male residential rehabilitation program run by the church in Compton. Through her weekly class, she promotes reading and writing, the word of God and self-esteem.

“No man is disabled in his ability but every man is capable in his learning,” she preaches to the men, staring at them so hard not one can break the gaze.

Their quiet respect and studious manner reflect deep feelings for Sharp. Some call her an inspiration.

“A couple of weeks before I came in here I couldn’t read anything,” Moore said. “I could sign my name to papers but I was functionally illiterate. When I met her I told her I had a reading disability and she cradled me in her arms and told me she’d have me reading in two months.”

Part of Sharp’s dedication dates back to her childhood in Fort Worth, Tex., where she often spent afternoons tutoring her younger brother, who was learning disabled. Later, she left home to attend college in Riverside and at 17, landed a singing contract with Columbia Records. Sharp and her all-girl trio, the Deb-Tones, spent five years recording popular Motown-style music.

Fame may have eluded her but Sharp’s faith was constant. In 1988, she quit an accounting job to become a full-time volunteer and evangelist for her Pentecostal faith.

“It was time to do what I was called to do,” she said. For nine years she was the volunteer host of a Christian talk show on KTYM (1460 AM) that addressed a variety of topics on “how to live a holy life.” Today, in addition to tutoring, she sometimes takes the men on field trips, evangelizes at public events, teaches a weekly class on how to proselytize and works with the homeless on Skid Row when she can.

The work is all part of her Christian duty, she said. “They tell me that my mother believed I was ordained in her womb. So I can never remember when I didn’t go tell someone about Christ, even as a kid. The teaching is part of (my evangelizing). I grew up with it (evangelizing) in my heart. . . . I was born into it.”

Ellee J. White / ‘The Guidance of the Lord’

Ellee J. White has a reputation for being a whip-cracker. When she speaks, people scurry.

Even her boss in an AIDS food pantry where she volunteers concedes it is White who is really in charge.

“Even though she’s the volunteer and I’m the coordinator, (in) truth she’s the one who coordinates me,” said Adrian Luna, volunteer coordinator and interim director of Imani Unidos, a pantry run by Faith United Methodist Church in the Athens neighborhood. “Without her, I’d probably be running around with my head cut off.”

In two years, the tiny pantry has built a clientele of about 150 low-income and HIV-positive men and women, who come for groceries free of charge once a week on an appointed day. White, 71, a retired auditor for the county social services department, has staffed the pantry each Wednesday since it opened, and whenever Luna needs an extra hand.

“I’d never really thought about working with HIV-positive people, but I’m the type to go wherever there’s a need,” said White, who has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years. “The guidance of the Lord just sends me there.”

She bustles down the two short aisles of the pantry, briskly pulling canned tuna, tamales and toilet paper from the shelves to fill a client’s order. When she’s filled three grocery bags, she delivers the supplies through the pantry door.

When someone mucks up the system, White gets riled.

“I’m gonna walk right outta here,” she threatened after Luna retrieved some extra goodies as a favor to a client. “You should not make differences between these people. It only causes problems.”

Sometimes White appears inflexible and a little harsh to the clients, who are referred to the pantry by social service agencies and groups helping those with the AIDS virus.

“She has attitude,” said one young man. “You shouldn’t work with people with AIDS and HIV and have attitude. This is the last time I come on Wednesdays, just so I won’t have to see her.”

But White was unmoved. “That’s not right” for one client to be given extra supplies, she said. “That’s not fair. I won’t tolerate it.”

Pastor Andrew Robinson-Gaither says it is White’s combination of vinegar and honey that makes her so valuable as a volunteer. “She’s a no-nonsense person, who, once committed to a task, is unstoppable. . . . Volunteers like Ellee are expressing love unconditionally and that is a very hard thing to do.”

White claims she is slowing down a bit with age, but her pace is hardly sluggish. In addition to the pantry work, she is president of the church branch of United Methodist women, and coordinates fund-raisers for Prison Fellowship Ministries, a Christian outreach program that organizes Christmas celebrations for children of the incarcerated each year.

A tour of the church reveals evidence of her other contributions. Here, the tables she raised money to buy; there, the commercial coffee maker donated by a local restaurant at her urging.

After 30 years working for the county, White, who retired in 1986, now volunteers full time. She laughs at her so-called retirement.

“My neighbor tells me all the time she wishes I had a job again, because she saw me more when I worked.”

On the Cover

Juana Esther Martinez serves the Eucharist on a Sunday afternoon at Pueblo Nuevo Mission Church in Westlake. Martinez has volunteered with the small storefront church for two years, teaching catechism on Saturdays and helping to draw new members.

Surveys have shown almost half of all adults perform some volunteer work at least once a year. Volunteers give an average of 4.2 hours a week, with members of religious organizations more than twice as likely to do unpaid work than those who have no affiliation, according to a recent Gallup survey.