Multi-cultural food, carnival game booths, keiki activities, continuous entertainment, a country store and silent auction are part of the family fun at the annual St. Michael the Archangel Feast Day Celebration. The community is invited to the 11 a.m.-3 p.m. fundraiser on Sunday, September 30 at Hale Halawai.
Admission is free and proceeds from food sales and keiki activities will benefit the Parish Building Fund to build a new church campus.
Attendees can build their own plate lunch from a wide array of homemade a la carte specialties at A Taste of St. Michael’s. Enjoy Thai spring rolls, sopasui, adobo, pancit, Tongan laulau, German sausage, Portuguese bean soup, tamales, tabouli, and Polish golumpki.
Find fresh pies and pastries, jellies and jams, pickled veggies and plants at the festival’s Country Store. Talented parishioners will stage entertainment. A live and silent auction—touting merchandise from local businesses and treasures from residents—will benefit the building fund.
St. Michael the Archangel Church is part of the North Kona Catholic Community that includes Immaculate Conception Church in Holualoa, St. Paul’s Church in Honalo, St. Peter’s Church in Keauhou and Holy Rosary Church in Kalaoa. NKCC serves over 1,500 families and a steady stream of visitors, many who return year after year.
The original church building was dedicated in 1855. It was built of lava rock and coral sand mortar; the floor was simple, hard-packed dirt. The small second floor was used as living quarters for priests. A bell from France tolled to the faithful in Kailua-Kona. Father Joachim Marechal, who toiled two years to build the church, was interred beneath the building upon his death in 1859.
More than a century later, the church was remodeled with a $100,000 facelift, offering parishioners the comfort of air conditioning. The church suffered damage from extensive flooding in 1968, 1974 and 1982. But the death knell was the October, 2006 6.7 magnitude earthquake that devastated Hawaii Island. The damage to St. Michael’s was structural, and the church had to be torn down. The parish is raising funds to build a new church in similar style on the site.
