In Faith Network

by Cheryl Holt

Several years ago, I had a visitation from an angel.

Directly after the incident, I told my husband about it, and close friends have always known that it happened to me.  But other than that handful of people, I was reluctant to talk about it.  It’s such a fantastical claim, much like pronouncing I’d been abducted by aliens.  It always seemed to me that the sorts of people making those wild assertions were crazy or publicity seekers.  I wasn’t either one, so I kept quiet.  I didn’t crave the types of exposure I was afraid the story would bring me.

Nor am I a religious person.  I don’t go to church, and I’ve never been affiliated with any particular denomination or belief system.  When I’ve always been such an agnostic, it was just too preposterous to believe that an angel would seek me out.

But it happened, and I’ve finally written about the amazing encounter.

In the 1990s, my husband and I had moved to Hawaii.  He’s an electrician, and he got a job on Maui, building some of the huge resort hotels that sprang up in the past two decades.  I tagged along after him.  I’d lost my job and was floundering, trying to figure out what I wanted to do and what my future should be.

At the time, I thought my trekking off to Hawaii was a random event, that I’d gone because I felt like having an adventure, and with the pitiful state of my professional life, I didn’t have anything better to do.  However, as I would soon learn, there had been nothing random about my decision.  I was shown that my entire life had been arranged so that I would end up on Maui when I did.

While Hawaii is probably the most beautiful spot on the planet, it’s also an extremely expensive place to live.  The poverty rate is very high, and during the years I lived there, official estimates were that ten percent of the population was homeless.  As a new resident, I was extremely shocked by the sheer numbers of people who were living in tents and campsites.

My angel asked me to build a soup kitchen—the first one in Hawaii.  He told me that God wanted me to do it, that hunger was the greatest sin in God’s eyes, and that God was asking for my help.  I didn’t want to do it; I was a newcomer on Maui and thought the task would be extremely difficult.  I argued and complained that it would be impossible.  I was sure they had asked the wrong person, that there had been a huge case of mistaken identity.

But the angel insisted they had sought me out because, yes, the task would be very difficult, and I had the fortitude to see it through.  My life experiences—life experiences that had been celestially implemented and directed—would give me the inner strength I needed to succeed.

Twenty years ago this summer, I built the first soup kitchen in Hawaii.  It’s called, Hale Kau Kau—the eating house.  I built it because God asked me to.  I built it as a favor to Him.  It’s still there today, going strong twenty years later.

Read my remarkable account:  Little Miracles by Cheryl Holt.
Now available as an e-book download on Kindle and Nook