tell me briefly the life of that saint or the virtues that we young girls should emulate.
After I had my lunch, which usually consisted of two sand- wiches and a bottle of home-made juice, I would go to her again to make sure that she had finished her own lunch. Where and what the nuns ate were always a mystery to us curious kids. We could not imagine then that nuns also ate or went to the bathroom! They used to wear the old habit—covered from head to toe with only their faces exposed. We also could not figure out how they could be so spick and span throughout the day in their long white garbs when we could not even keep our white blouses remain white throughout the day. Their three–cornered veils that flowed down to their waists made them look like penguins—and that is what we nicknamed our nuns. After lunch then, she would have me sit at a corner table and teach me how to knit sweaters and bonnets. She said they were for the poor children in the mountain provinces in the north. The Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters (formerly called the Canonesses of St. Augustine) were professed to be missionaries in foreign lands where Christianity was still unknown. These Sisters pioneered mission schools in the Cordillera from Baguio, Benguet to the far-flung barrios in Kalinga and Ifugao. I have seen photos of them riding horses along mountain trails and eating with the indigenous peoples around campfires. And I used to be so touched by the pictures of the half-naked children gathered around those nuns. So those tiny sweaters were for those tiny children, Sister Robrecht told me. While teaching me how to do the knitting stitches, she would be ripping huge men’s sweaters donated from Belgium and rolling the yarn into balls. Those balls of yarn would later on be made into the small sweaters. In one
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