And then were three ... a small Portland, Oregon community of sisters plugs on with faith and determination.

STORY BY BRIAN DOYLE PHOTOS BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN

The Sisters of Reparation of the Sacred Wounds of Jesus live in an enormous white house on a hill in Portland, Oregon. The house is built of cedar trees that once grew on the hill. The judge who milled the cedars to build the house added extra sun windows all over because his wife was an invalid. After the judge sold the house it became a Mormon mission for a while, but just as the Mormons were leaving to build a big temple with big golden angels on the turrets, the sisters arrived, looking for a big house, and they have lived there ever since.

There are white crosses carved into the teal-blue shutters, and by the front steps are flagpoles bearing the banners of the United States and of the pope (white and gold). Adjacent to the flagpole is a massive iron archway bearing 14 red steel roses and the sisters' logo, also made of steel, which features Christ's burning red heart.

The sisters are somewhat unusual. They were founded by an opera singer from Louisiana, they professed their first vows in a tiny chapel in upstate New York, they conducted their first work in the Mojave Desert of California, and since 1973 they have lived and worked in Oregon, where their foundress and first superior general, the former Yvonne Chalfonte of New Orleans, went to her eternal rest after 34 years as Mother Mary Rose Therese of the Holy Spirit.

Mother Mary Rose's vivid life included the selling of newspaper ads in Ohio, singing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and forming the Sisters of Reparation of the Sacred Wounds of Jesus, who take their name from the Catholic theological and spiritual meaning of the word "reparation"--the offering of your work and suffering in atonement for sins. Because Christ's sufferings on the cross are the source of human redemption, Catholics are called to unite their sufferings to his, and so share his infinite strength and love.

Another unusual thing about the Sisters of Reparation is that they are in habit all day, every day. The habit is a dress with short sleeves and a waist-long cape; embroidered on the collar are two crowns of thorns and a cross. Each sister wears a silver medallion with the face of Christ. The entire habit is powder blue, with purse, gloves, hat, and shoes in navy blue. The light blue symbolizes the joys of the Madonna, the dark blue stands for her sorrows.

Each Sister of Reparation also wears a rosary ring on her left ring finger, to symbolize love and fidelity to the Mother of Christ, and a silver ring with the crucified Christ on her right ring finger, to symbolize her spiritual marriage to Jesus.

What is perhaps most unusual about the Sisters of Reparation of the Sacred Wounds of Jesus, however, is not their wearing of habits or their residence in a former Mormon missionary house or their founding by a Louisiana opera singer, but their numbers: The three sisters who live in the big house on the hill in Portland are the Sisters of Reparation of the Sacred Wounds of Jesus.

There is Sister Anne Joseph, there is Sister Mary Immaculate, and there is Mother Mary of the Angels, who was elected superior general of the order ("in a fair election," she notes) by her two colleagues in 1998, when the previous superior died. There are no other Sisters of Reparation of the Sacred Wounds of Jesus in the whole world, which is why the three sisters sink to their knees every night at 7 o'clock in prayer for, among many other things, novices.

The oldest of the three sisters is Sister Anne Joseph, who began life as Maria Burns in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was raised Baptist and was very devout. "I said my prayers every day faithfully and sometimes I think maybe I was given the gift of conversion because I never missed a day of prayer," she says.

At age 7 she was crippled and eventually lost much of the use of her right leg. After high school she scrambled for work, in the heart of the Depression, and ended up as supervisor of the telephone room at a newspaper in Akron, Ohio.

During her travels she had met and had been much impressed by Yvonne Chalfonte, the singer who later became Mother Mary Rose Therese. One day Yvonne took young Miss Burns to Chicago, to hear the extraordinary boys' choir at Old Saint Mary's.

"She took me right down to the front pew," says Sister Anne. "This rattled me, as I'd never been in a Catholic church before and didn't know how to act or anything. I asked her why she took me to the front seat.

"`To get closer to the fire,' she said.

"Well, I'd never knelt down in a strange church and I wasn't about to start, so when everyone knelt I sat, and when they stood I stood. So things went along. But to my left, off to the side, there was a tabernacle, and there was a curtain in front of it, which harks back to the Temple of Solomon, you know, and I noticed that curtain moving, and I felt a powerful presence behind it, staring at me. I felt it as strongly as you feel anything. You know how you can feel someone staring at you? I felt someone staring at me from behind that curtain. I asked Yvonne after Mass if Jesus was behind the curtain and she said no, he was up front in the Eucharist.

"But I felt him there behind the curtain. "Well, that led soon enough to my being interested in being a Catholic, and when I told that to Yvonne, she said she was pleased, and that she knew a very fine priest who might be able to offer me instruction. When we went to this priest, at St. Bernard's, I remember very well the feeling of the pebbles under my feet in the churchyard. There's always those little things you think about and remember, and that's what I remember about my first steps toward conversion, those pebbles in that churchyard a long time ago."

Sister Mary Immaculate began life as Margaret Bunty in Baltimore. "There were eight children, originally, and then we lost one, so there were seven of us. My father was an upholsterer, and my mother raised us. Our parents were daffy communicants and very devout, and my sisters and I skirted around the idea of lives as religious women from when we were little girls.

"When I was 17 years old my mother made us go to a sodality meeting--you know, a women's group devoted to the Holy Mother. I didn't much want to go, but my mother was firm, and at the meeting a wonderful priest told us the story of the Little Rose, the Canadian-American mystic Mary Rose Ferron.

"The more I learned about holy women like her. the more I was sure that being a sister was for me. But it was a hard decision, of course. I was a perfectly healthy young woman interested in young men, and I of ten prayed to the Holy Mother for a husband, and look what she gave me for a spouse--her Son."

Mother Mary of the Angels, also born and raised in Maryland, wanted to be a nun from as early as she could remember. She recalls Yvonne Chalfonte giving a concert in Baltimore. "Her clear, clear, lyrical voice enthralled me, and I wanted to emulate her. I wanted to be spiritual and talented as she was. I always knew I would be a sister. I was wearing veils and teaching my dolls the precepts of the church even before I was in school myself.

"I was granted the gift of a vocation as a Sister of Reparation, and this has been the great grace of my life. God matches tools to tasks, and he has called us to be his tools."

Mother Mary and Sister Mary teach music each week to children from kindergarten through fourth grade at Saint Stephen's school nearby. Mother Mary is also a nurse at Providence Hospital, the local Catholic hospital, and it is her salary that has paid the mortgage on the house, upkeep on their van and car, water bills, electricity bills, and heating bills.

As for the many other costs of communal living the sisters are either diligent ("God has always seen to it that at least one of us is a good seamstress," notes Mother Mary) or courteous in their acceptance of assistance from the corps of friends and supporters they call donnes ("I give of myself" in French), these being men and women who help cook meals, preserve food, do yardwork, help with sewing, sing in the sisters' Ave Maria Chorus, collect and distribute bread to the poor, help with cleaning and preparing the basement chapel for Masses and prayer services, and many other tasks.

There are also the members of the sisters' Anima Christi group--men and women who, though bedridden, support the sisters' work by regular and concentrated prayer, usually the rosary or Divine Office.

In the matter of vocations, the sisters work hard. They visit schools. They visit parishes. They speak at Masses. They invite young women into their home for tea. They host Catholic groups of every size and stripe. They host Masses with guest priests on a schedule so carefully organized by Mother Mary that they know who will be offering Mass in their chapel nine months from now.

They host "discernment weekends" at the house for young women. They hand out brochures ("Join our marathon for souls") and take ads in national religious vocation guides and are often the subject of articles in The Sentinel, the Oregon Catholic newspaper. They work in a formal coalition with other orders to draw interested young women in Oregon to retreats. (The coalition's motto is "Here we are!" and its brochure is blunt: "Interested in rolling up your sleeves and getting involved in the messy business of walking with struggling people?")

They host a well-attended annual pastoral visit from Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland, a wiry, grinning Chicago priest who takes a lively personal interest in the welfare and good works of the sisters in part because he is an ebullient and curious man pretty much interested in everything and in part because there are far fewer Catholic nuns than there used to be in Portland, as is the case everywhere. The number of nuns in Oregon has halved in recent years, to 531 today, of whom 62 teach in Catholic schools.

Nationally the number of Catholic nuns reached a peak of approximately 180,000 in 1965 and has declined precipitously ever since to approximately 60,000 today--a reduction of nearly 70 percent in less than 30 years. The median age for American nuns today is 69. Ninety-four percent of nuns in the United States are over age 50; 98 percent are over age 40. The rising median age, coupled with dwindling vocations, means two pressing issues for most orders: rocketing health care costs and, in the smaller orders, the real possibility of extinction.

In the case of the Sisters of Reparation of the Sacred Wounds of Jesus, health care for the order is a serious issue but not one that scares them overmuch. Mother Mary, as an experienced and astute professional nurse for three decades, is the sort of brisk and brilliant health care professional you'd be thrilled to live with.

As for extinction, the sisters do not admit to its possibility. "I am convinced that we will be granted novices," says Mother Mary in a tone brooking no disagreement. "God has here built a rich treasure, and we have great trust in the Lord. He will provide. We are in his care.

"Our work is to offer up each day and walk with him wheresoever he leads. Each minute of your day, each act, each word, is a prayer of immense potential beauty, and our work is to live each minute with him in our hearts and bring him to the sick and the sad and the impoverished. We are charged with helping people toward reparation with God, and such reparation can only lead to joy, so that's what we do, and we don't worry about what might happen in the future. We think about it, sure, but it's not our place to worry.

"What worries me far more about our dwindling numbers is that we see fewer children, which means that young people just don't have much of a chance to see women committed to a vowed life in Christ. That's a shame. That's why we make every effort to meet young women and just be an example of women in religious life.

"What young woman is going to be a sister if she never meets a sister, talks to a sister, sees the real life of a sister? Novices come from personal connection. So we do whatever we can to be present for young people, and we pray for the best every evening in our little chapel upstairs.

"Look, anyone on a journey to heaven has dark nights, and I have dark nights, especially since I am the superior, and the great difficulty in being a superior is discerning what God wants us to do. But you pray, and pray some more, and walk with Christ. I figure Christ is so close that often I can't see him very well. But he's there."

BRIAN DOYLE is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland and author of Saints Passionate & Peculiar (St. Mary's Press). STEVE HAMBUCHEN is a freelance photographer in Portland, Oregon.