Hawaii Vaca, Post 14 - The Painted Church in South Kona

So, day 6 of our vacation has begun. We were watching tv and it was one of those channels that advertises various stuffs to do while you're in that area.  One of the things that was in the looping advertisements was the painted church.  The church is St. Benedicts Roman Catholic Church and was built in the mid-to-late 1800's.  It had some history to it and a cool back story and best of all, wasn't too far off of the road that we would be on to get to Volcanoes National Park, which was our primary destination for the day.

We decided that we would attempt to find it on our morning drive and by golly, we did.  It's in a very non-touristy area where we were on narrow, curvy roads in which the mature vegetation was so different from anything else that we had seen (or would see!) in Hawaii.  Locals were out in their yards and sometimes on the road, picking fresh fruit that was growing all over the place.  By the time we got back to the church, it was SOOOOO quiet and peaceful, it almost felt like we were doing a bad thing by just being there.  

There was another car or two in the parking lot but there wasn't a person to be seen anywhere.  We looked around for a bit and discovered that the church was open, so we went inside to look at the paintings that the original priest, Father Jean Berchmans Velghe, had done to help teach the Bible at a time when many people couldn't read or write.

I did not take any pictures inside of the church as I didn't feel right about that.  There are a few pics in the links that I provided above to give you an idea of what it looked like.

We did take some pictures outside of the place though, and once again, they simply do not capture the natural beauty of the area!  But hopefully you'll enjoy them anyway.

Not sure what or where this road leads too, but there were some gardens and other things, like crosses, along the path. 

This appeared to be the newer part of the cemetery on the grounds.

The back of the church (the previous two pics were immediately behind where I'm standing for this picture) and a little bit of the garage where a car and lawn mower were stored.

A bit of the garden area and older cemetery (I'm only guessing because of how full it was!) in the front of the church.  Not the loan telephone pole which was along the road we drove in on.  It's hard to tell in this picture, but you can see the ocean from here too!

Another garden/cemetery shot.

And the front of the church with doors open wide to help welcome the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit!  You can just barely see the garage on the very right of the photo where the first pictures were taken.

That was it.  A nice little stop in an area that's so beautiful that I can't describe it properly here!

Off to the volcano!