BEST SOUP KITCHEN

The sisters serve several hundred meals a day, sponsor on-site visiting nurses twice a week, and will soon offer shelter for 25 women and 10 children. When Mother Teresa visited Miami in 1974, she established the Missionary of Charity in one of downtown's grimmest quarters. Early in the morning, the homeless begin congregating in front of the 727 building on NW Seventeenth Street. Most of them wait patiently, others anxiously, for the sisters to open the doors to their soup kitchen. For many of those waiting, it will be the only meal of the day. This is a corner of Miami where both the missionaries and the homeless prefer to be known only by their first names. Those who come to the soup kitchen are white, black, Hispanic, men and women, a reminder that misery can come knocking on anyone's door. "We have to take care of our brothers and sisters, especially the poor, those who are abandoned, those who are alone," said one sister. "Mother Teresa reminds us of the words of Jesus: 'Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.'"