I'd describe myself as pretty outgoing.
Interested in heaps of different things too.
Being outdoors, and travelling, being with people.
Yeah, just all that sort of stuff.
I'd describe myself as a fairly gentle and reserved person.
I'm more of a listener than a talker.
I wanted to get married, I wanted to have a family.
But there was always this sort of feeling inside of me that one day I was going to be a sister.
Board games on a getaway is hardly unusual.
But what makes this gathering unique is that it's made up of nuns.
Most of whom are in their 20s or early 30s.
Generally the stereotype would be that nuns are older.
People apologise to me when they swear in front of me.
I think they must think I'm easily offended or something like that.
Oh, photocopy!
Photocopier!
I think people get shocked when they discover how normal we are.
It becomes a curious matter of why would somebody who
potentially could do all sorts of other things with their life go and do this?
And what exactly is this?
The black and white habit has given way
to long brown skirts, white shirts and beige jumpers.
Their clothes, furniture, household goods, food and even their vehicles are donated.
We don't have mobile phones, we don't have our own computers.
We don't have our own cars.
I'm on Facebook, but I don't have an iPhone so it's not that instant access to some of the technology.
But I've learnt that it's okay to go for two weeks without looking at your email.
The area we don't have stuff is like, cool clothes.
So if I wanted to go anywhere, I'd wear this.
Like even to a wedding, we don't have dressy clothes.
It's just what people expect us to wear now, so.
Every week, they head to their local bakery to pick up the leftover bread.
Tonight, Bernadette and Johanna are assigned to the bread run.
So we go every Thursday night and get about half a dozen loaves of bread from Baker's Delight.
Right, let's see if there's a park.
Hail Mary full of grace, please find us a parking space.
I was wrestling with God, trying to put him in his place a bit.
I was saying, Lord, religious life, it's just one step too far.
I can't do it and I won't. If you ask anything else of me, I'll do it.
But no. No, not this.
And then, when I'd finished my little rant just in kind of the quiet moment
afterwards, in my mind.
There was just this question that arose in my heart.
So what else would you do?
And I kind of just realised that, oh my gosh.
This is what I want to do with my life. This is what's going to make me most fulfilled.
When I was 20, I was at uni, and I just did all of the normal things that 20 year olds would do.
We'd go out into town on a Saturday night, had our favourite places to go.
And yeah, just had a really good social life.
And when I was twenty-one, God became a much more serious part of my life
and that changed the direction of my life, in a lot of ways.
Prayer is a key part of the sisters' lives.
They pray for more than five hours each day.
For me, prayer is essentially about spending time with the one I love.
I talk to God, tell him how I'm going, I ask him for stuff.
Sometimes he talks back.
More often than not we just - like a comfortable old couple who have been married for years
and don't really need to say a lot, I guess.
Amen.
The first three years are really about
kind of coming in, and living the lifestyle.
And discerning whether this really is something that you can, and that you want to do
for the rest of your life.
So, I'm not 100% sure at the moment but, this is what the first three years are about.
Earlier this year, Katherine took her full vows.
Unlike Johanna and Bernadette, her period of discernment is over.
Catherine's decided on this life forever.
It's not an easy life, leaving behind family and friends.
Yeah, we don't give up our humanity when we walk in the door to become sisters.
I've been attracted to people, I've fallen in love too.
Obviously we don't have that physical, sexual fulfilment
that doesn't mean you give up any sense of having love in our lives.
One of the good things about living in sisterhood is that we do this together.
It was a bit of a journey thinking about the really, the big questions of life like:
Where does the universe come from? Where do we come from? What is our purpose in life?
I found the answers to those questions in God.
If I had to talk to a non-believer who just didn't get this life, who thought it was waste.
I'd probably just tell them that when I live this life, it just feels like the life I'm meant to be living.
There's been hard moments, where I've said, "Oh, I can't do this."
But not, "I can't do this, I'm going to leave."