Meet Our Sisters: Sr. Josephine Ewertz, OSB

(Meet Our Sisters will be a Blog Series to get to know our Sisters from the Missionary Benedictine Sisters in Norfolk, NE. Each month we will feature a new Sister and her journey to become a Missionary Benedictine Sister.)

 

 

Place of Birth: Kansas, USA

 

Date of First Profession: November 17, 1947

 

Date of Final Profession: December 12, 1950

 

Feast Day: March 19 (Solemnity of St. Joseph, Husband of Mary)

 

I was born and raised in Central Kansas on a wheat and animal farm rented by my Dad. We were a family of 7 – 2 boys and 3 girls. Our lives centered around farm work and fun, the parish school and church activities and our relatives who all lived nearby (9 Aunties and 9 Uncles and their families).

I always said from first grade on that I would be a nun like our school teachers and 3 aunts who were Precious Blood nuns. As a teenager I became more interested in nuns who were foreign missionaries but reluctant to leave the farm and family I put off entering till 3 years after High School by getting a job in the city. When I finally found the small ad in the Sunday Visitor of the Missionary Benedictines who said they can use all the different talents in the missions. A couple letters settles everything and in less than a month I was on the train to Norfolk. In those days there were many years to shift to a new level in the strict convent discipline. After the homesickness finally wore off religious life of a missionary became very challenging, interesting and enjoyable.

When hardships came, I recalled what one novitiate teacher told us: you will never out-do God in generosity. I am very thankful for all the challenges the convent life required of me and the support I always received in good and trying times. I agree with Luke 6:38 – God gives back what we give, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

I am very grateful for my experience in the hospital kitchen, 7 years in teaching primary children, 33 years for garden and grounds work in my retirement years. That in all things God may be glorified.