During morning leisure time, the girls played games, took walks and talked with postulants and novices - candidates on their way to becoming avowed sisters. There was lunch, a rosary and recreation time. And as the sun waned, the sisters and the girls prayed evening prayer and ate dinner. There was another period of recreation, followed by spiritual reading and night prayer before bedtime.
"The whole day was centered around prayer, which was really cool," said St. Benedict parishioner Catie McMorrow.
Support from home
The travelers found a mix of support but also curiosity and questions from family and friends who knew of their venture to the convent.
It was a "fantastic opportunity," said Val Tobin, mother of Briana. Such an experience gives Catholic youth "something more to consider as they are thinking about what they are being called to do."
Briana Tobin - parishioner of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, graduate of Polaris Charter School and soon-to-be freshman at University of Alaska Anchorage - said non-Catholic friends have showered her with "tons of questions" about the experience. It's "intriguing" for them, she said, because "we don't really have the same exposure to religious life as you would in some places in the Lower 48."
Ramos said her parents were behind her "100 percent," though visiting a religious congregation for vocational discernment is "nothing they ever thought of doing when they were younger." Friends were positive, too, she added, but a "little puzzled because I don't seem to be the type that would do something like this, I guess."
Surprises
The five Alaskans found their own amazements and surprises in Nashville.
"It was sort of an out-of-this-world experience," Tobin explained.
She was struck most by the number and joyfulness of the Dominican sisters - including the retired sisters the girls met during a tea party there.
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"There wasn't one sister who I saw who wasn't exuding joy," Jones noted.
As a result, "the sisters don't seem to really age," McMorrow said. "So sometimes if you went to look at them, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the sisters that just entered and they're like 18 or the sisters who are 72 and are sitting in their wheelchairs. They all have this joy about them that the rest of the world doesn't have."
McMorrow was surprised also by the beauty of the convent grounds and the chapel with vaulted ceilings and intricate stained-glass windows. "It's definitely a different beauty than we have here," she observed.
Tobin and Fuller were awed, too, by the power of silent prayer during the sisters' monthly day-long, silent Eucharistic adoration. "I've never been silent for that long," Tobin said, smiling. "I had no idea that silence could be that filling."
Ramos was "blown away by the greatness of it all, by how very, very much God is involved" in the sisters' lives.
"It's profound, it's beautiful, it's exciting and joyful," she said. "It's one thing to know what they do. It's another to experience it and live like it."