Stories of Vocation - Sr Caroline Campbell

God of the South China Sea

It all started in the torrid heat of Hong Kong. It was the mid 1960's and I had been received into the Catholic Church a few years back at the age of 13. My parents were very supportive of my becoming a Catholic; a marvellous gesture on their part as they were Anglican missionaries.

As odd as it may seem, I had feelings that I should become a Catholic Sister long before I actually became a Catholic!! I had had no direct contact with Catholicism and Nuns were rather forbidding creatures that walked in twos with eyes duly downcast.

However, that impression of Nuns was soon to be greatly amended. Hong Kong in the 60's was a veritable hothouse of religious orders. Many had been recently expelled from China and many religious were living in the hope of re-entering what was, undoubtedly, a land greatly beloved by them. Post-conciliar fervour was creating a very hopeful, fruitful and flexible time for the Catholic Church in Hong Kong. I was being taught the UK GCE syllabus by American nuns via a medley of English and Cantonese!!

At weekends I would trundle down the hill to a hospital for children run by  the Columban Sisters.They helped instil in me a love of God; and the beginning of a love for nursing.Thus I was immersed in the loving support of two religious orders, the Irish Columbans and the Maryknoll Sisters, my teachers.

Both orders were very positive and encouraged me to give due consideration to entering with them. Indeed, I went to the House of Formation for the Columban order on one of my trips back to the UK. It was all very impressive bar the trivial matter of the length of the corridors in their nurse training school!!!  On minutiae such as these – complete irrelevancy – I was put off entering with the Columban Sisters. I was in fact trying every way to get out of obeying what I felt God was calling me to: the religious life. I put every obstacle I could to obeying God. I bargained and pleaded but yet the still small voice of God would come back and back.

My mother was running a small voluntary school for children with cerebral palsy – a much neglected sector of society then. With my permission she spoke to a volunteer who had had her very happy schooling in Carshalton.This school was run by the Daughters of the Cross, an order completely unknown to me. This volunteer, Pat, then kindly wrote to Carshalton requesting that I be sent some promotional information.  I knew that this had been instigated – but not that some information would be winging its way to me.

In my pleading with God I had asked for a sign and given a deadline for receiving information from Carshalton. Childish behaviour maybe, but with such a great step I wanted a definite sign. My deadline for the arrival of this information duly came. The morning post brought nothing, I was off the hook. I was delighted. I celebrated by going to the idyllic island of Cheung Jau. Very unusually, there had been a second post that day – the envelope had arrived!!  And with it I knew that I would now have to obey God’s will. What I saw in the literature from the Congregation confirmed all I hoped for.

I stood on the balcony hearing the chug-chug of the junks sailing serenely in the South China Sea, and there and then commended my life to God in the Daughters of the Cross.

Many things have happened since I stood on that balcony, a lot of them very happy, a few sad, but that commendation and commitment to God remain as serene as that South China Sea those many years ago.

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