Miami, USA - As the nuns prepare for Holy Week services at the Convent of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary, electronic sounds hum along with the chanted prayers.
Sister Faustina, for example, surfs the Internet as she updates the southwest Miami convent's Web page, which reports receiving 5,000 hits a day.
Mother Superior Adela Galindo tests a microphone as she prepares to record her weekly radio program for Catholic station Radio Paz, which airs in South Florida and is also beamed to stations in Central and South America.
You would hardly guess that Mother Adela started this busy order in a one-bedroom Hialeah apartment, but she did. Her group of young sisters comprise the first order of Hispanic nuns created in the United States in more than 50 years.
Recognized by the Archdiocese of Miami in 1990, the order serves a growing Hispanic presence in South Florida, where up to 70 percent of Latinos are Catholic. They visit the sick in Broward County hospitals, teach students in Miami and travel to Latin America on pastoral missions.
Their tools are Bibles, crucifixes and rosaries, but also camcorders, laptops, and Power Points.
"We are not of this world, but we must go out into this world and paddle against the currents of these difficult times, as the pope has asked us to do," Mother Adela says.
Her flock is made up mostly of immigrants from Colombia, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Paraguay. But age also makes these nuns and postulants a rare commodity in today's Catholic Church. Most have yet to reach their 30th birthday. Founder Mother Adela, the oldest member of the community, is 43.
As a teenager, Mother Adela grew up in war-torn Nicaragua. After her family fled to Miami as refugees, she decided to answer a higher calling by starting a religious community.
"I was only a normal single girl who was strongly involved with church," Mother Adela recalls. "Then God started talking to my heart and asking me more and more."
First to join her embryonic congregation was Sister Ana Margarita Lanzas, another refugee from Nicaragua.
Months later two more women joined. "We all started praying together to see what was that God wanted from us," says Sister Ana Margarita.
The small apartment, where the four lived for three years, served as a chapel in the morning, an office in the afternoon and sleeping quarters at night.
"We would roll out mattresses after dark and that is where everyone would sleep," Mother Adela says.
The 15 nuns and five would-be nuns (three novices and two postulants) who make up this unique congregation are now housed in four homes, in the 3000 block of Southwest 14 Street in south Miami.
Although small in numbers, the order is replenishing a religious vocation in decline; Nuns in the United States have dropped from 180,000 to 70,000 in the past 40 years, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
While they are preparing this week for Holy Thursday and Easter Vigil services at St. Raymond Church in Miami, a normal week's highlight is their Friday night get-together.
The musically inclined among them play synthesizer, guitar, keyboards and clarinet, while others sell empanadas, cookies and art crafts to raise funds for their mission. About 300 people show up for these weekly gatherings, also at St. Raymond's at 3475 SW 17th St.
"We are really never still," said Mother Adela, despite acknowledging the small miracle of silence that they observe each day, from 10 p.m. to sunrise. Members wear a distinctive habit: a brown frock and veil, white blouse and a crimson-colored rosary fastened around the waist.
The sisters get glowing praise from the Rev. John Madigan, archdiocesan vicar for religious orders of priests, nuns and brothers.
"All religious orders begin with charismatic leaders, and Mother Adela is one," said Madigan, who counts her as a good friend. "She is extremely intelligent and articulate. And she's brought together a group equally so. As many hours as they spend doing good things for people, they spend an equal amount of time praying."
He notes the young order's steadfastness over recent years as the church, both national and local, has been shaken by priest abuse scandals.
"They're not blown away by every vagary; their eyes are steadily on Christ," he says. "Their guiding principle is to preserve all that is beautiful in the Catholic Church.
"It is joyful just to be in their presence."
The young Latin American women who joined the movement have lived in a real world that offered them parties, boyfriends, college campuses and jobs.
Sister Elena Castillo, who at 20 is the community's youngest member, felt her calling after listening to Mother Adela being interviewed on Nicaraguan television. Two years ago, Castillo joined the Hialeah flock and hasn't looked back.
"I even promised God to give up Coca-Cola if he helped me join the order," said the fresh-faced young novice, who is close to taking her final vows.