Sister Mary Judith, now 26, joined the sisterhood at age 21. "I was really at a crisis point in my life. I had been in college for three years, and prior to that I grew up in northern Saskatchewan on an Indian reservation, so I encountered a lot of suffering, drugs," she says. "I was looking to be filled, and I felt empty. But it's interesting because I wanted to save the people I saw drowning, but I was drowning myself."

Sister Mary Judith says she removed herself from the situation by going to college. While away volunteering at Thanksgiving, she received a call that a close friend had been shot back home. "It kind of just put me face-to-face with my life. [It] wasn't just a joke or just having fun," she says. "I needed to find a direction."

Sister Mary Judith says she turned to God. "He made it very clear to me that if I wanted to be happy, I had to give my whole life to him."