Sister Mary Louise Dolezal

I’d like to introduce myself.  My name is Sister Mary Louise.  I was born at home in the small town of Silver Lake, Minnesota.  My high school years were spent in Glencoe, Minnesota. 
At the age of 18, I entered the Community of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Paul, Minnesota.  I worked for a number of years at St. Francis Hospital in Shakopee, Minnesota, in the Cafeteria.  Nineteen years ago I went back to school to earn my diploma in child development.
At the present time I am working for a large child care center and I focus on caring for 3 to 16 month old babies and toddlers.  I see how important the early years of development are to each child and how this period forms them into the adult they will become.  I value the time I spend with them, because I learn so much from them.
I am also the Vocation Director for my Community.  I have enjoyed the times when groups of young women (usually 8th grade girls) come to visit our Community for a day of inquiry.  We pray together and I share information with them and we try to encourage them to consider religious life.
I have been living in Shakopee for 32 years with my Community Sisters and at this time I share life there with one Sister and a small dog. 

Sister Hyacintha van Oijen

I live with another Sister in the Netherlands in the city of Grave. I was born in 1940 in Groesbeek, close to the German border.  After I completed my schooling, I worked for the Franciscan Sisters for four years.  During those years I discovered that I would like to enter Religious Life in their Community.  I was still very young, so I was required to work for the Sisters for one more year.

I entered the Franciscan Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels in1960, in the city of Lent in the Netherlands.  Sister Mathildis was the director of Novices.  In order to get familiar with the German Sisters I also stayed at the Motherhouse in Germany for three months.  After my first profession of vows I worked in a house for handicapped children.  After that I worked with paralyzed children in a house called “Winkelsteeg” for six months, and then moved to the city of Breda to continue the ministry of assisting handicapped and blind children.  This was a wonderful but difficult task.  I was doing the same work that Mother Rose did, so I felt like I was doing the right thing.  I lived and worked there for 11 years and became one of the leaders.  It was very stressful for me because we had a 3 month old baby there at the time, and she would cry most of the time and it took much effort to calm the baby and get her to sleep. I took the baby with me in my sleeping quarters.

In 1975 I returned to Lent, the place where I had entered.  I worked with elderly people in the nursing home.  After that I studied to become a nurse, and moved to Grave to work in the nursing home.  From 1977 until 2000 I stayed at that job, and now I am doing work as a volunteer in another nursing home with people who are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.  I enjoy this very much. Besides that, I am doing some mission work with the Capuchin Brothers three afternoons per week.

It was a very great joy for me that I was allowed to carry the sarcophagus at the beatification of Mother Rose (along with other Sisters) in May of 2008.  There were 4 of us carrying this coffin – one from Germany, one from Brazil, one from the U.S. and myself from the Netherlands.  Each of us counted it as a joy and honor.  During the Beatification Mass and ceremony I was deeply touched and very moved inside.  The events of Mother Rose’s beatification impressed me in a way I will never forget.

Sister Evelin Kahl

My name is Sister Evelin Kahl.  The sixth of 11 children, I was born on September 10, 1944 in Gross-Schoenebeck near Berlin, Germany.

From my parents among other gifts in my genetic “dowry“ I was blessed with creativity and a positive attitude toward life.

In 1953 my family fled to what was then West Germany.  Since January 1963, I have been a Franciscan Sister of Waldbreitbach.  After completing my teacher certification in the 1970s, I was director for a variety of pre-school programs in the German states of Saar, Rhineland-Pfalz and Brandenburg.

For one three-year period, I was engaged primarily in youth work—in a program initiated and funded by our congregation and housed in Waldbreitbach.

Throughout my teaching career, I also served as a volunteer in various capacities in the respective local Catholic parishes.

Following an undertaking representing a significant personal challenge – the development and directorship of a child care facility in then East Germany – I made a career change by re-training as an occupational therapist.

With these newly-acquired skills, I worked on a part-time basis with my elderly co-sisters and in a senior residence operated by our order.  In addition, I was chosen to be the leader of a sisters’ living group.

Along with remodelling an apartment for our needs, I will move together with other Waldbreitbach Franciscans to take on a new and challenging ministry in the city of Trier-Ehrang, in a section of town well-known to be a socio-economic hot-spot. 

My new position will still allow me to offer occupational therapy for our sisters at the Mother Rose Residence in Trier.