St. George • Looking for peace, a renewed sense of purpose and a fresh start, Alex Viktora stepped off a bus in St. George last fall and pondered the next steps he needed to take in his life’s journey.
Prompted by what he called “the conviction,” Viktora left Missoula, Montana, where he said he was troubled, couldn’t sleep and had lost his sense of purpose. More problems greeted him in southern Utah.
His luggage had been lost, and he was forced to sleep overnight in the bus station until his bags arrived. Despite the difficulties, Viktora said he felt impressed he had found a spiritual refuge.
“The conviction was on me so much that I asked a [station worker] if she knew of any churches, and she took me out the front door and pointed toward Solomon’s Porch Foursquare Church,” he said, “and I’ve been coming there ever since.”
(Mark Eddington | The Salt Lake Tribune) Alex Viktora eats a meal at Solomon's Porch in St. George on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025.
He attends not just for salvation, though Viktora is a regular at Sunday services. No, he and others who are homeless, hungry and elderly, congregate at the St. George church where Pastors Jimi and Rickine Kestin, along with a slate of volunteers, dish out free food and heaping helpings of compassion on Friday and Sunday afternoons.
“We love people unconditionally with the goal of introducing them to the gospel of grace and the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the process, we try to meet people’s needs,” Pastor Jimi Kestin said. “Our goal from the day we founded Solomon’s Porch feeding ministries is to put ourselves out of business because there’s no one hungry in St. George.”
Even so, the lunches come with no strings or religion attached. The pastors, both of whom are of retirement age, also don’t get paid for the ministry and meals they provide, opting instead to live off their Social Security.
Feeding the hungry was not on the menu for the couple when they were on staff at Foursquare Church in Las Vegas and heard God’s call to relocate to St. George two decades ago.
“When God says quit your job, sell your car and your house, and start a nondenominational church in a town that you have never been to before and that is 70% Latter-day Saint,” Pastor Jimi said, “ … well, it wasn’t the sanest idea we had ever heard.”
(Solomon's Porch) Pastors Jimi and Rickine Kestin shepherd the nondenominational Solomon's Porch Foursquare Church in St. George .
The Kestins began their Utah ministry in 2005 teaching Bible study out of their living room to about 30 people and started serving potlucks after services when they noticed there were single mothers who could ill afford to put food on the table.
In 2006, the couple established Solomon’s Porch in downtown St. George, utilizing an old First Security Bank building at the corner of Flood and Tabernacle streets. It was there they initiated the Sunday Feast, held after services, with the mission of providing hot meals to homeless and impoverished individuals. A year later, they started the Friday Pantry at the church, offering food boxes to families and others struggling to afford groceries.
Their ministry specifically addressed the hunger many experienced on weekends when other area pantries were closed. As the need became known, the Sunday Feast and Friday Pantry grew, with the Kestins soon providing hot coffee and a hot meal to more than 100 people every week.
Revelation and epiphany
(Mark Eddington | The Salt Lake Tribune) Solomon's Porch in St. George offers free meals twice a week.
Given that St. George is home to a number of well-heeled residents, it came as a revelation to the Kestins that there were so many indigent people going hungry.
Pastor Jimi remembers a conversation he had with a former county commissioner after he and his wife started the food ministry.
“He says to me, ‘You know there’s only about half a dozen to 10 homeless people in St. George,’” he recalled. “And I replied, ‘Commissioner, if that’s true they are all masters of disguise because my wife is feeding 10 times that number each Sunday.”
Soon the needed food outstripped the Kestins’ scant resources and stamina. Pastor Rickine remembers her husband preaching to the homeless people one Sunday as she toiled on the sidelines bringing in and cooking all the food.
“I told God,” she recalled, “‘I can’t keep cooking every week because my legs are killing me, and we can’t afford to keep doing this. ‘So you are going to have to supply the food and to take the pain out of my legs for me to continue doing this.’”
Shortly thereafter, she said, her husband met with Utah Food Bank officials, who agreed to supply Solomon’s Porch with food. Pastor Rickine said she was at Walmart that same week when God told her to buy shoes.
“I said, ‘I don’t buy $25 shoes; I buy $9.99 shoes…,’ she recalled. “I bought the shoes and wore them the next Sunday. I had no leg pain, and food started coming in from the Utah Food Bank.”
For the past decade, Solomon’s Porch has been operating out of its church at 1495 S. Blackridge Drive. Instead of covering expenses out of pocket, they now receive donations from the Utah Food Bank, the bishops’ storehouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and other area churches, retailers and restaurants.
All told, Pastor Jimi estimates, Solomon’s Porch dishes more than 20,000 meals a year “with no paid staff and without a single penny of government money.”
Filling stomachs, rubbing shoulders
(Solomon's Porch) Food items being collected for distribution at Solomon's Porch in St. George.
Every Friday morning, the Utah Food Bank delivers food — collected from retailers like Costco, Walmart, Harmons and Albertsons — to Solomon’s Porch. The Kestins, along with the volunteers, then prepare about 75 box lunches to hand out when the Friday Pantry begins at 2 p.m.
Pastor Rickine said some of the food is set aside for the Sunday Feast, which starts at 12:30 p.m.
Foursquare and Latter-day Saint service missionaries help with the cooking and serving chores. When they aren’t slicing up sandwiches or ladling out soup, the Kestins often dine and chat with the recipients.
Derek DeToni-Hill, senior pastor of St. George’s Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church, says the Kestins’ approach sets them apart.
“They have such big hearts, especially for the poor and people who live in vulnerable situations,” he said. “That’s why they are so well-respected in the community.”
Those interactions, especially the ones that help people turn their lives around, are what matter most to Pastor Rickine. She recalls a man who had been on the street for more than a decade who came in to eat each week, head down, not talking to anyone. She asked him what he craved and would like to eat. He laughed and told her steak and shrimp.
Upon serving the man “surf and turf” the following week, she remembers telling him, “You know, it’s amazing what God will do if you just ask.”
Pastor Jimi said the man kept coming back each week, his head held higher. Several months later, he recounted, the man thanked the couple and said he was leaving because he had asked for an apartment and a job up north and received both.
“We have always heard that a meal can change things,” Pastor Jimi said, “but it is incredible to see the impact that something as simple as caring about somebody over a plate of food can have.”
For his part, Viktora called the Kestins’ sermons and meals a godsend. As if being homeless and having a brain tumor and congestive heart failure aren’t challenging enough, the Montana transplant said he lives off Social Security and sleeps wherever he is unlikely “to be caught by the cops.”
“It’s been a lifetime of going downhill,” the 63-year-old said. “Now my heart is too weak to have my pacemaker and defibrillator replaced. Once that battery runs out, that’s it for me. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve had a good life.”