“Our primary intention is to have a house open and welcoming to any woman interested in religious life,” said Mercy Sister Michelle Gorman, a member of the leadership team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Auburn regional community and the liaison to new membership. “We want to share the Mercy spirit of who we are.”

Serving as a kind of house mother for the group is Mercy’s incorporation minister, Sister Jeanine Tisot, who will mentor, counsel, and teach candidates Mary Oladimeji, Shari Roeseler and Charmaine Jayawardene.

“This is a whole new experience for me,” said Sister Tisot, her eyes lighting up as she talks about her responsibilities, which include coordinating experiences in community, spiritual discernment, education and prayer.

At the convent, nuns and candidates come together for morning and evening prayer, but the highlight of the day for most is when they sit around the dinner table enjoying a meal they take turns to prepare.

“It’s time we get to know each other a lot better — tell funny stories, laugh and catch up on each other’s lives,” Sister Tisot said. “You see all the gifts people have and you also see all our little quirks.”

Using the word “gifted” about any one of the three candidates, said Mercy Sister Maria Campos, is an understatement. She moved out of her previous home at Holy Cross Convent in West Sacramento to live at Holy Spirit.

Sister Campos, who is associate director of vocations for the diocese, views living with the candidates, whose ages range from 37 to the late 60s, is “a good place to share faith.”

“I think women today who enter have much more knowledge of who God is and where they are in God’s life than we were at age 19 entering community,” she said.

One of the three candidates is Mary Oladimeji. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, she received a bachelor’s degree in African literature in English from the University of Ibadan, worked for the Catholic Institute of Peace and Justice in the state of Enugu in eastern Nigeria and as a religious instructor for the Mounted Police in the city of Ilorin before her arrival in the United States in 2002.

Making her home in Sacramento, she began attending Mass at St. Francis Church where she met the pastor, Franciscan Father Anthony Garibaldi. Upon learning that Oladimeji was interested in a vocation to religious life, Father Garibaldi made a suggestion.

“He told me he knew of a wonderful community that would be nice for me to look into,” Oladimeji said.

One meeting with Sister Gorman was all she needed to make a crucial decision.

“What struck me was her simplicity and friendliness,” Oladimeji said. “She was cheerful and happy and I knew that was what I wanted to be.”

She wasted no time learning about the charism of the Sisters of Mercy, working as a volunteer at Mercy Education Resource Center, an office worker at Holy Cross School, and then in the library and archives at Mercy Retreat Center in Auburn.

Currently Oladimeji works with homeless women and children at Maryhouse, a program of Loaves & Fishes. When it’s time to leave work at the end of the day, she delights in telling her co-workers she is “going home to her sisters.”

“They say, ‘Oh, you mean the nuns,’” Oladimeji says, then gleefully adds, “I say, I mean my sisters.”

Another candidate, Shari Roeseler, may be “a new kid on the block” in the formal discernment process, but she brings with her some impressive credentials in the works of the Mercy Sisters.

For the past eight years she has been working in ministries sponsored by the Mercy Sisters. She worked first with Mercy Foundation and since 2001 has been regional vice president of resource development with Mercy Housing California, responsible for fund raising in California, Washington, Utah and Idaho.

Roeseler, who is a member of St. Francis Parish in Sacramento, holds a second degree black belt in Kenpo Karate and has taught martial arts and self defense since 1991.

Raised in the Lutheran Church, she said her decision to convert to Catholicism came from observing the Mercy Sisters at work.

“I was struck by the way they conducted their lives professionally and the way they find a way to live that faith in a very concrete way,” Roeseler said.

She likes the fact she is “finding God in the marketplace” by connecting people who need housing with those who have the resources to finance it.

She also enjoys living in a home that is opening its doors to other women interested in learning about religious life.

“Part of the appeal is being very intentional about creating this welcoming community and a sense of daily showing up and being present and sharing our faith together,” Roeseler said.

The journey to religious life for the third candidate, Charmaine Jayawardene, has been in her own words, “out of the norm.”

Jayawardene was born in Sri Lanka where she earned degrees in English, speech and drama from the University of Ceylon and also at Trinity College in London. She also married and raised two sons.

In 1977 the family immigrated to the United States where Jayawardene worked as a domestic and international banker based in San Francisco.

Eight years after the death of her husband in 1986 she moved to Sacramento.

Walking the path of one devoted to contemplative prayer, a method of prayer which places an emphasis on a personal relationship with God, Jayawardene lived for a time in a cloistered community with the Carmelite nuns in Santa Clara.

“It’s a beautiful vocation for the person called to it,” said Jayawardene of her decision to leave the Carmelite community. “I was searching for a form of caring for the other.”

It was that search which led her to the Sisters of Mercy, where for the past several years she has worked in the diocesan lay ministry program, as a member of the Diocesan Pastoral Council and most recently assisting with hospitality at Mercy Center in Auburn.

“I enjoy the freedom the Mercy community offers,” Jayawardene said. “It is a very cheerful group of sisters and their appreciation of you touches my heart very much.”

Rounding out the group of Mercy Sisters living at the convent hospitality house are Sisters Cora Salazar and Eileen Mary O’Connor. Sister Salazar’s day job is working as executive director of Families in Self Help, based in West Sacramento. She sees this new brand of community living at the convent and her ministry working with Southeast Asian refugees, Hispanic and Afghan people a match made in heaven.

“I like the idea of living in a very global international family, bringing my experience outside with many ethnic communities into living it,” Sister Salazar said.

Sister O’Connor’s gift to this new venture in communal living is the richness of experiencing 22 years of parish ministry, several years working as director of novices for the Mercy Sisters, and most recently as a spiritual director.

What she most enjoys about living at the convent is “an openness of inviting new members” into her home.

“It gives me life and energy and hope,” Sister O’Connor said.

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