As a young girl far from home, far from parental guidance, I found the Sisters’ teaching substantial, genuine and meaningful. They did not only teach in the classroom but they were personally involved with us outside class. I felt they were interested in my life and nurtured me as best they could. For instance, they made me listen to the radio in my language. When they discovered I felt isolated they sent me to Taborio where there were other Ellice Island girls. All these efforts gave me a sense of belonging and identity. There was a strong tendency within me to identify with what I was learning since the desire for identity and a sense of belonging is strong at that age. I found this identity in the Sisters and in the lives of those early martyrs I read about during my school days. They say that ‘God can write on crooked lines’. It certainly was true in my case. Amidst all my adversities, loneliness and emptiness and the longing to be loved by my parents, somehow I sensed that God was watching over me and drawing me to a call I wanted to embrace. The call had a dual dimension. It was primarily the call to embrace the Catholic faith, and secondly the call to the religious life. These two calls were no small challenge particularly for one with a Protestant background like myself. It meant going against my parents. This brought a lot of unhappiness to me because I knew that my parents strongly disapproved of my ‘conversion’. However, like the simple girl that I was with a simple faith, I plucked up courage and took the necessary steps for my own inner peace of mind and heart. I felt my call was a very personal response to God’s personal love for me and my desire to follow a way of life that would enable me to serve others, fulfill my aspirations, and enrich my purpose in this life.

The following year I asked to become a nun, a Carmelite. Sister Oliva Glynn kindly informed me that if I wanted to become a Carmelite I should go to Samoa instead of Papua New Guinea. One of the Kiribati Sisters of the local Order, the Sisters of St Teresa, had gone to Papua and New Guinea to join the Carmelites there. She had returned and rejoined the Sisters of St Teresa. Samoa would be better for me. To me at that time Samoa was too far away and I could not imagine it. Then she said, ‘Why don’t you join us?’ I said, ‘Oh, no. You work too hard’. She laughed and said, ‘But you are doing it’. I did not take long to think about it because in that same year I wrote to Sister Marie Timbs, who was in charge of aspirants in Sydney, to be admitted into the Novitiate. There were two of us, Witake Tawita and myself. We left for Sydney on Easter Monday of 1972.