The journey to Oklahoma City’s Jesus House began in 1958 in San Antonio, Texas. Betty Adams was seriously ill, had nowhere to go, and also suffered from acute alcoholism. Sister Betty became the first homeless person that Sister Ruth took in.
The next stop was New Orleans, where Sister Ruth set up her easel and drew portraits in Jackson Square, and Sister Betty continued to drink. Life on the streets of New Orleans was hard, and the two friends came back to Oklahoma City, where they began attending a rosary group led by Glenn Cullen, and subsequently met long time friends Madeline Reed and Frances Jordan. Frances undertook three days of fasting and prayer on behalf of Sister Betty, which resulted in Betty’s deliverance from alcohol.
Sister Ruth set up her easel in Shepherd Mall in 1965, the year that it opened, and drew portraits in front of the Sherwin Williams Paint Store.
Sister Ruth received a Fine Arts Degree from the University of Oklahoma, and attended Julliard Music Conservatory in New York City. It was during her stay in New York City that Sister Ruth met Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, a lay ministry serving the poor and homeless. Ruth felt an immediate kinship to Dorothy and her work, which continued throughout the years of her own ministry.
Sister Ruth opened Jesus House in 1973 with co-founder Sister Betty Adams, in a storefront building at Reno and Walker Avenues. In 1983, Jesus House moved to 1335 West Sheridan, where it still serves the poor, handicapped, and mentally ill, under the direction of Janis Mercer, Sister Ruth’s daughter.
Like Dorothy Day’s St. Joseph’s House, Jesus House began as a step of faith in an urban storefront, with very few resources and a “business plan” rewritten each day through prayer.
The hippie movement had begun, and many kids were on the street, traveling from one end of the country to another, and Ruth and Betty began feeding them, and even taking them home to sleep on the floor of their small apartment. Sister Ruth would sit up with these young people, telling them about Jesus and reading scripture with them. Students from the nearby campus of OCU would also come by to talk to Ruth, and the apartment was nick-named “that Jesus House”.
Jesus House moved often in the early days, because of the need for a larger space, because the neighbors didn’t like the food lines that formed in the evening, and a many other reasons. There used to be a spring ritual at Jesus House—Ruth and Betty would always drive around looking for vacant buildings.
Early in 1980, Jesus House moved to an old frame house on 9th & Walker. “9th Street” is remembered by many Jesus House workers for its feeling of family, for the round table where Bible study went on pretty well all the time, and for the night janitor crew, composed of Ruth, Betty, and anyone else who would pitch in, who worked at night cleaning office buildings to support the ministry.
When Jesus House first began printing a newsletter, it was an in-house publication for the ministry itself, containing the meditations, poems, and prayers of those who did the daily work. Sister Ruth and Sister Betty loved the following Bible verse, and wanted it to be included in each issue:


Through their many years of providing food, clothing, shelter, and spiritual counsel to thousands of those in need, Sisters Ruth and Betty encountered many dangers and snares. One of their hardest trials took place in the very beginning, even before the storefront on Reno, when the ministry was housed in an old warehouse on 15th Street and South Walker. It was January or February, and bitterly cold, when the nightly gospel music was interrupted by armed men at the door. Mayor Patience Latting had initiated a campaign to get the transients out of town, and suddenly Sisters Ruth and Betty were facing officers of the Oklahoma Police Department and Fire Department, who barged in the door and began shutting down the shelter. Men and women were forced out into the cold, and when Sister Betty protested, she was thrown against the wall and held there while the evacuation took place. Some of the women were taken to other shelters in Oklahoma City, but when the shelters were full, several men spent the night outside in the cold. By morning, three of them had frozen to death.

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