Sister Elizabeth Ann Barkett of the Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker was born February 16, 1967, in Muenchweiler, Germany.  The youngest of five children, she graduated from Kempsville High School in Virginia Beach, VA in 1985.  She has a Bachelors Degree in Elementary Education and her Masters Degree in Instructional Leadership, both from Northern Kentucky University.  She has taught 2^nd, 5^th and 6^th graders and has been an assistant principal. She entered the Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker in 1990 and made her final profession of vows in 1998.  She lives in Walton, KY and teaches at the communitys elementary school.

She can be reached at barkett67@yahoo.com 

The expression God works in mysterious ways took on new meaning for me when I, a nun in a religious habit, found myself shopping at Chicagos Hard Rock Café.   As the Assistant Principal at a Catholic grade school I was helping chaperone an 8^th grade class trip to Chicago and another chaperone wanted to buy some shirts at the Café for souvenirs so I accompanied her.  As I watched while my friend shopped, I recalled a visit to another Hard Rock Café.  I had been visiting London years earlier (before entering religious life) when my friends and I stayed out so late the subways were closed and we were locked out of our Bed and Breakfast.  I found it amusing to compare the twenty-something college student that I had been to the older (and hopefully wiser) woman religious that I was now.  The journey that took me from Londons Hard Rock Café to the one in Chicago is one I had never imagined I would take.

I spent the first 16 years of my existence living the life of an Army brat.  My father was a career army officer and so when Dad got his orders Mom and all five kids packed up and moved.  Some places we lived were exciting and I had many friends.  Other places were not so pleasant and making new friends more of a challenge.  In the midst of all this change, the one constant was my family.  Mom and Dad were loving and supportive and although my three brothers and one sister and I fought constantly (or so my parents claimed) we were a close family.  We went to Church every Sunday and other important days.  I must have been a teenager before I learned that Thanksgiving was NOT a holy day of obligation.  However, as I became older and entered my teen years, religious obligations were carried out from habit rather than any real piety. 

It was when I entered college that I first began to look at my future seriously.  My main goal was to get an extremely high paying job that would allow me to travel extensively and have a really nice car.  The one problem I was having was deciding what exactly I should major in; I would try different colleges and took a variety of courses but couldnt seem to settle on any one area.  Then my mother intervened.  Mom was convinced that my indecisiveness would be turned to certainty by making a 30-day Novena to St. Joseph.  To please my mother, I said the prayer for 30 days, without even skipping a day!  Although the effects were not immediate, the prayer worked.  I began to realize that making money was not the most important thing and I decided to focus on a career in which I could truly be of service to others.  I settled on teaching, hoping to dedicate part of my life to an area of our country where teachers were scarce.  Gradually, I concluded that if it were such a good thing to dedicate part of my life to the service of others, then dedicating all of my life was even better.

Once religious life became an option for me, I began to look for communities that were involved in teaching.  I visited different orders, one of which was the Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker.  When I asked to enter the community, it was August of 1990.  I told the Sisters I would be back in a month, knowing that if I waited too long, I would talk myself out of entering.  So, in September, 1990 I became a postulant.  After a postulancy of eight months, I received the religious habit and my new religious name.  As a novice, I spent the next two years studying Church documents, the Bible, Church history and the religious vows I would be making.  At the conclusion of my two-year novitiate I made my first vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.  Over the next five years, I completed my college degree and began teaching.  On July 16, 1998, I made my perpetual vows. 

Its a mistake to think that once youre settled in your vocation, that the journey is over and now you can sit back and relax.  While I was initially attracted to our community because some of the Sisters are teachers, I came to realize that my reason for being in the community was not to teach but to do whatever God asked of me. 

So, through daily Mass and prayer and through the work I do with my students, I strive to grow spiritually so that the work God wants me to do will not be hindered by my weaknesses, but that He will shine through me to others.