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Book Launch: "The Ride of My Life"
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Sister Mary Quentin was born in England, entered our novitiate in Bloomfield, Mullingar in Ireland in 1941 and was missioned to Australia in 1945. After teaching in our primary schools in Brisbane until 1957 she was missioned to Papua New Guinea where she was stationed in the Aitape Diocese in the West Sepik Province.
At 84 years of age, and still enthusiastic about her pastoral work, Sr M Quentin says she says she is continually challenged and rewarded in her vocation and considers her life to have been truly blessed. There is no doubt at all that, given half the chance, she would gladly begin all over again.
The following is the summary from the back cover of her recently published book entitled “The Ride of My Life”.
From
the relative serenity of a small convent in Northern New South Wales,
Sr M Quentin has at last succumbed to increasing pressure to record
some of the stories with which she has delighted friends for many years.
These anecdotes present a range of the unexpected, the humorous and the tragic which makes this collection uniquely distinctive, authentic and hugely entertaining.
Written from a wealth of personal observation and experience garnered over thirty-four years as a Missionary Franciscan Sister of the Immaculate Conception working in the coastal and Torricelli mountain areas of Papua New Guinea, Sr M Quentin captures with exceptional humour, love and understanding, the simplicity and complexity of tribal and village life in the area and the environment in which she and her colleagues were operating.
Not stated, but impossible to conceal, is the extraordinary resilience and persistence of this truly remarkable woman whose single minded dedication of herself to the service of her faith and the love of her fellow human beings, at the expense of what many would consider the basic necessities of life, will be an inspiration to all.
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