fited from Drana’s care and largess. Six orphan children came to live in
the house. Drana continued to impress upon her children the importance
of helping the less fortunate. When you do good, she told the children, do
it quietly, without calling attention to your own virtue.
Drana always found creative ways in which to instruct her children.
Summoning them one day, she asked them to inspect a basket in which a
number of good apples rested. She then placed a rotten apple in the bas-
ket and covered it. The following day, she had the children inspect the
apples. They discovered that many of the apples, so luscious the day be-
fore, were now beginning to rot. The moral was simple but profound: it
takes only one corrupt person to corrupt many others. She then reminded
her children to stay clear of bad company lest they suffer the same fate as
the good apples in the basket. Drana’s influence on her children was ex-
traordinary, especially after their father’s death. Despite her need to work
and manage a business, and despite her devotion to the poor, Drana still
spent time with her children, who benefited immeasurably from her guid-
ance. So powerful was Drana’s presence that Gonxha recalled “Home is
where the mother is.”^3FINDING THE PATH
As the children grew older, Drana insisted that they become more in-
volved in the activities of their local parish church. Besides her mother,
the Sacred Heart church exercised the most influence on young Gonxha.
The church was not only important for its religious teaching, but, as a
center of Albanian culture and identity, also reinforced the nationalism of
the Bojaxhiu family.
Of the three children, Gonxha most readily became involved with the
church. She early showed a tendency for religious devotion. When she
learned to play the mandolin, it was the church to which she offered her
talent. Along with her sister, Aga, Gonxha joined the choir; together the
girls earned a reputation for their clear voices and frequently sang solos.
“I was only twelve years old...when I first felt the desire to become a
nun,” Mother Teresa recalled.^4 Much beyond that information, she re-
vealed little about the circumstances that prompted her vocation.
Throughout her life, Mother Teresa maintained that her religious experi-
ence was private. She would not discuss it. What made her calling ex-
traordinary was that at age 12 Gonxha had never seen a nun. Yet, her
desire to pursue a religious life did not come as a surprise to her mother. Of
her three children, Gonxha suffered from the poorest health with a
chronic cough and weak chest. Drana believed that if her youngest was
8 MOTHER TERESA