Fig.3 - Peter Gergen Family - Turtle Lake ND. I belonged to a good Catholic family with regular Sunday Mass, confession, Holy Communion. Even at a very early age, I found myself becoming more and more interested in the religous life. But how could I know whether I had that mysterious vocation. I had never even seen a Sister and did not know how to contact any. I was scared of boys and ran away from them whenever possible. Was that a sign of a vocation. I wondered.

My parents provided us with good Catholic reading - and one day I came across a special prayer to the Blessed Virgin to be prayed every day for a month with the promise of a sure answer. I remember that I knelt by a low-silled window in my room upstairs facing the setting sun and prayed fervently, and I think trustingly. I firmly believed that Our Lady would appear in the sky, as I had read about in one delightful story. For one happy month, I lived in a fairy world sure of an answer to my prayer. When the month ended with no appearance of Our Lady, I was plunged into the depths of depression. But the Blessed Mother had her own way of answering my prayer. Unexpectedly our pastor announced that two Sisters would be coming for a two week's doctrine course. How excited I was! I could hardly wait. They would be the first Sisters to come into my life.

They were coming from a far away place in Minnesota - a convent called St. Benedicts. It was an answer from Our Lady! At last they came, Sister Helena, Father Bonaventur's own sister, and Sister Amata, both to become my good friends in the distant future. I thought they must be the most beautiful Sisters in the world, and I knew just by looking at them that I wanted to be a Sister just like them. I was too shy to say anything about vocation, but parents know. And so Dad and Mother suggested that I go to the St. Benedicts Academy for High School.

They had to make great sacrifices to send me, since my two elder brothers were still at St.John's in Collegeville. I am sure that my dear parents had to go into debt to get the necessary money, but I was a thoughtless young girl who only knew that her dream was coming true. And so in fall I enrolled in St.Benedict's Academy. There I studied very hard, as I was older the the other high school girls and so I wanted to finish in three years, which I succeeded in doing, even finishing as Valadictorian of my class. In those years there were crop failures in Dakota, and I hate to think of the burden my education put on my parents. Charistically, they never let me know - such are parents.