>User Profile > srfrancis > All-About-Me

The items we sell will either have been made by ourselves or we will be reselling other items in the hope of expanding our market. It is our aim that you should be happy with our service and if there are any problems please contact us to try to resolve the issue. We usually use the cheapest form of either mail or carrier when sending our objects. If you wish for anything different please let me know. Our traditional items have been the sale of religious cards for various occasions and the printing and sale of books mostly on Carmelite saints and prayer. We also sell home made rosaries and items of that nature. However I am thinking it might be a good idea to try to widen this to other items and may try a variety of other things. I was born and brought up in South Africa. I entered the Carmelite Order in Rivionia just outside Johannesburg in 1997 shortly after my father died. I had spent 18 months as an Ursuline novice before that but felt that although I had trained as a teacher and they are a teaching order, that was not the life I was looking for. It was a time of stress trying to think out my future and cope with my father's illness. He died of cancer. Then I moved to Carmel. I will not pretend it was easy. I found it very difficult but was very sure in my heart that that was the plan God had for me despite what others said. I did my six months as a postulant and then was clothed in the Carmelite habit with the white veil to show I had not taken a final commitment. After a year as a novice I was allowed to make my first vows. These were for three years during which my instruction continued and I was more integrated into the community. After those three years I made my solemn commitment binding myself to the Order for life with the vows of poverty, (we own nothing personally and anything we have and use can be taken from us at any time), obedience and chastity. In their own way they have all been a problem in one way or another but I have survived until now having made my first vows in 1979. In many ways it gets easier as one gets older and probably loses some of the unrealistic ideals of youth and finds that we are just the person we are and have to get on with that and struggle to save and redeem what we are. The idea of being a saint in our first or second year proved unattainable! Religious life like family life has its own tensions. I moved to England to the monastery that had founded the one I was in in South Africa. Each community is totally independent and totally autonomous. The only connecting with Darlington was the fact that we had close ties as they had founded the South African one. Problems once again raised its head and we have now found ourselves in an experimental situation where because there are so few of us, the monastery was not viable to run. We are trying to sell it but so far without any luck and are living in what had been a small nursing home and from the outside looks like a family home.