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Religion | Churches are coming up with creative ways to meet struggling people's physical needs—and opening doors to address their even deeper spiritual needs | Lynn Vincent

Cecil Johnson is certain he once met an angel. It was on July 28, 1996. Fleeing a decades-long crack cocaine habit, Mr. Johnson had left Eustis, Fla., the day before on foot and walked all night in a soaking Southern rain. He was determined to hitch a ride to Atlanta.

"I just needed to get out from around drugs," he said. It was a humble departure for a man who had once been an uptown drug dealer, spending lavishly on the ladies from a suitcase full of cash he kept in the trunk of his canary-yellow Lincoln Towncar.

That was before the dope got hold of his soul. By the mid-'80s, "I wasn't the dealer anymore," Mr. Johnson says. "I was his best customer." But by 1996, he was tired of that. So, 48 years old, drug-ravaged, and broke, Cecil Johnson took off walking. He wept as he went, crying out to a God he had never met.