Weekend America's Kelly McEvers grew up thinking nuns were pretty cool. It helped that her aunt was a nun. But through the years, she noticed some changes at the convent her aunt belonged to. McEvers spends some time at Sisters of St. Francis in Independence, Mo.

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"I can't relate to any specific moment. I think it developed in grade school. Because our sisters, Franciscan sisters taught us, and they taught us how to take care of the church. We just worked around with them, as kids wanting to help the sisters. And I think the Lord just planted the seed of awareness then. Maybe the ability to translate that awareness came much later, but by the time I started high school it was very clear to me that I wanted to be like those sisters who were teaching me. They knew how to pray. I thought they were doing fantastic work running the orphanage. And they were happy. It was an uplifting life. They had a reason for living and working and serving, and they were very happy doing it. It looked good to me."

Sister Josephine Boyles

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"I didn't have the opportunity to go to a Catholic school when I was in grade school. The sisters always came for two weeks in the summer and taught Bible school. And I was just always enthralled with who they were and what they did. When we played school we pretend we were sisters; we got kitchen towels and made veils. We had little brothers and made them pray. I wasn't always interested. It was a thing that came and went. I wanted to travel all over the world. That was my dream. When I was a senior in high school a retreat master said to me, 'What are you going to do?' I said, 'I'm going to be a teacher and travel all over the world.' He said, 'Well if you wanna teach, why don't you think about doing it for God?' It was something that kept gnawing at me afterwards. I said something to my mother, but my family didn't have the money to pay the dowry—you had to pay a dowry back at that time. I came up with the idea that well, I'll try it, and if I don't like it, I can get out. I'm still here."

Sister Leona Bax

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"Consciously, I think it happened in high school. When I was a child I had an attraction to the sisters where I went to school, a curiosity. Are they really people? In those days you never saw them eat. When I was a senior in high school I asked to join the Sisters of Mercy. And they said no, and I was crushed. So I went to college for a year, and I asked again. And they said no. And so I went back to college for another year, thought to myself, 'I'm gonna finish college.' So I got my degree in four years—math education.

One teaching job was at the Sisters of St. Francis boarding school in Nevada, Mo. The first year they paid me. The second year I volunteered. The third year I was a postulant (to become a nun). All of that was God's hand moving me where he wanted me to be. God leads us. God always leads us to do his will. We just have to listen."

Sister Connie Boulch

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