Prayers and Pennies

Sister Theresa Scheuren, a Benedictine nun, made her first million in this desert hamlet in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

She is working on her second million this weekend at a fall festival fund-raiser to help a monastery and its 25 monks.

Scheuren couldn’t imagine such large sums of money until three years ago, when she said God called upon her to raise money for St. Andrew’s Abbey, a 750-acre ranch in the Antelope Valley with apple orchards and towering trees.

One of her first assignments as director of development was to replace a worn 80-year-old water system at the former Hidden Springs Ranch, which the Benedictine monks purchased in 1955 after Communists expelled them from China.

The cost: $1 million.

“Not many people know we’re out here,” Scheuren said, laughing. “So I had to lean heavily on the Lord. I pray a lot.”

She prayed, wrote grants, designed and mailed brochures. And she prayed some more. The money trickled in. Hundreds of dollars, then thousands and--finally--a million.

The monastery now boasts a two-mile water system with a 275,000-gallon pressure and storage tank and 14 hydrants.

Scheuren’s newest moneymaking ventures include organizing this weekend’s 43rd annual fall festival, proceeds of which cover the monastery’s operational expenses, as well as scrounging roughly $500,000 for a ceramics center where monks can design, manufacture and ship their internationally known ceramic artworks.

In recent weeks Scheuren has been not only praying but baking for profit. She and dozens of volunteers have picked, peeled, cleaned and sliced apples to sell at the two-day festival, which is free except for a $4 parking donation.

“It’s apples and apples,” Scheuren said. “We’ll have apple pie, apple loaf cakes, apple nut bars, apple crisps, apple turnovers, dried apples, dried apple pie and the abbey’s trail mix with dried apples in it.”

Abbot Francis Benedict, who runs the monastery, praised Scheuren’s dedication. “She does the work of four people,” he said. “She believes in us, and she helps us to move forward.”

The festival, which will have food booths, arts and crafts, music and games, attracts thousands of people. In the past, it has raised $400,000 for the monastery.

“This is our bread and butter,” said Scheuren, who has worked as a teacher and fund-raiser at St. Lucy’s Priory in Glendora since 1966.

Also featured at the festival will be hundreds of homemade ceramic plaques of biblical scenes and figures of the abbey’s popular, wide-eyed angels and saints designed by Maur van Doorslaer, a Belgian monk who lives at the abbey for half the year.

St. Andrew’s monks started the ceramics workshop in 1969 to help defray costs of running the monastery, whose financial operations are independent of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. The figures are sold nationwide in gift shops and Catholic stores.

The ceramic pieces are manufactured at the abbey in an old, cramped milk shed. Scheuren and the monks believe that a new ceramics center will boost productivity.

She is leading fund-raising efforts for a state-of-the-art building with 11,000 square feet of rooms for storage, shipping and manufacturing. The ceramics center will cost about $600,000, but Scheuren has already raised more than $100,000 in donations.

The 43rd annual Fall Festival runs Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Abbey, 31001 N. Valyermo Road in Valyermo. Admission is free but parking is $4.

For additional information, call (661) 944-2178.