Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

A mysterious stranger and impossible task.

It's a common story.

In William Barrett's novel The Lillies of the Field, a young traveling army vet named

Homer Smith stumbles upon an order of Catholic nuns.

They are poor and in desperate need of help with their fence.

Homer fixes it for them, but instead of paying him, the nuns believe that he has a gift

from God meant to build them a church.

And spoiler alerts, he does build them that church.

The nuns insist that he stay for the grand opening the next day so that he can be recognized

for his work, but Homer doesn't need recognition.

He's done his job so he leaves in the middle of the night before they wake up.

The Lillies of the Field is fiction, but Homer's story is far from a tall tale.

Back in the 1870s, there was a small order of nuns living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Where Bishop Jean-Peptiste Lamy oversaw them, a group known as the Sisters of Loretto,

and had a chapel built for them.

The architect and Tuan Moulet sadly died before construction finished, so he did not get

to see the hour lady of light chapel in all its glory.

Nor was he able to fix the one glaring problem left over.

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