A Letter From Our Administrator

     You are never alone!!      At the conclusion of my college studies, I completed an administrative internship at a large Catholic hospital. It was a great experience!! However, of all the things I learned during that internship, the most memorable was a story about their priest chaplain, who had served there for at least 40 years. In the course of conversation on one of the nursing units, the employees started talking about their experiences of this priest, including the following story. One night around 3:00am, one of their patients took an unexpected turn for the worse and his hour was fast approaching. As the nurses worked to make him comfortable during his last moments, the priest chaplain turned the corner and entered the room. He prayed with the patient and the staff, administered Last Rites, and remained with the patient in those last moments of his journey from this life to the next.      No one had called for him. There had been no previous indication that this patien

  Jesus, I Trust in You! Dear Family and Friends,      I pray that beyond the COVID surge, you are experiencing the blessings of this new year, and seeing the hand of God in every detail of your day!!      My family has lots of adventure stories!!   My mother was a quiet and unassuming (and beautiful!) woman, but she had a taste for speed that would surprise most people who knew her.   That drive for adventure and the unknown carried to each of her children… granted in very different expressions… but each of us seven siblings have our own stories of living on the edge!   😊 Mom giving her grandsons a lesson on speed (and fun!)        My sister, Ellen, combines her adrenaline needs with the expression of her faith… she goes on extreme hiking pilgrimages.   She and her pilgrimage companions pick challenging terrain, carrying all provisions on their backs, and go deep into the lonely wilderness to be Alone with the Alone.   They pray along the way, contemplate, share, and soak

God is an amazing story maker!!  Dear Family and Friends,      After I had been in the convent just a few weeks, a group of young women came for a discernment weekend.   One evening as we were talking to them and answering their questions about religious life, my superior turned to me and said, “Tell them your Vocation Story.”   I looked back with a “deer in the headlights” look, and sheepishly said, “I didn’t know I had one.”   I certainly felt that I had a vocation to the religious life, but I had never reflected on the “story” of how I got there.        Do you remember that part of The Lord of the Rings when Frodo and Samwise are in the most desperate position trying to get into Mordor and their mission seems impossible?   Samwise says this… “… we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started.   But I suppose it’s often that way.   The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them…   Folk seem to have been jus

Dear Family & Friends,      Today I share a reflection, a story, and an announcement!! So, keep reading because they are all connected! 😊 Reflection :      In the month of November, the Church turns toward the souls of the faithful who have gone before us… to pray for them, to ask their prayers for us, and to again unite ourselves with them in this battle against evil for the salvation in Christ of the whole world. Have you ever heard of the Church Militant, Church Suffering, and Church Triumphant??      Church Militant is us… those of us on earth who are part of the body of Christ through baptism and profession of faith. We are working out our salvation in this world by grasping onto Christ and the grace He offers in His Church amidst the influences of sin that we find within ourselves and around us in the world. We are seeking to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this life so that we may be with Him for all eternity in a glory that we cannot even begin to imagine!!      Chu

 Dear Family and Friends,      October 4th is a big day for us!! We Sisters celebrate the Solemnity of St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of our religious order. We even wear our black habits, which is equivalent to our Sunday best!      St. Francis of Assisi was a man of deep prayer. For all that people know of him… his austere lifestyle, his deep love for the beauty of creation, his care for lepers, his powerful preaching of the Gospels, his founding of religious orders that have flourished to this day… behind all of that was a deep life of prayer in which he surrendered all to God, and God, in turn, conformed him to the life of Jesus. It has been said that since the time of Christ, Francis is the most Christ-like person to walk the earth.      After we Sisters have been in the convent for twenty years, we are given the opportunity to go on pilgrimage to our Motherhouse in Germany for three weeks, and to Assisi, Italy for three weeks. What a huge grace!! In 2017, Sister M. Juliana,