SANTA TERESA DE JESUS SCHOOL
A STORY OF SERVICE AND SELF-SERVICE!
Founding a house in Bogotá was the desire of the Superiors and Councilors of the Congregation. Despite the difficulties that the undertaking represented, this desire materialized in the decision to send a group of Sisters, accompanied by the Mother Provincial and her Secretary, to fulfill such a mission.
Encouraged by the evangelical spirit that Jesus communicated to his apostles, the pioneers of the Community left Yarumal for Bogotá. A modest trousseau consisting only of bedding and the sisters' indispensable wardrobe was laid out for the journey. Thus, in 1934, while the founder of the Tertiary Capuchin Sisters was going to his final meeting with God, the Sisters Margarita de Jericó, María Rosa de Santo Domingo, Emilia de Urrao, Trinidad de Yarumal, Isabelina de Yarumal, Catalina Carmona I founder present at the Weddings of Oral, the Provincial Mother Purification of San Andrés and her Secretary, Mother Imelda de Yarumal.
They arrived after a long and hard journey by boat and train. A cold savanna night awaited them, under torrential rain, in a town whose streets turned into mud. At that time, nine o'clock at night, they first went to the parish house to present themselves to the parish priest, as is customary among nuns. He received them unceremoniously: they were not invited, an interrogation about where they came from, the purpose of their arrival and who was sponsoring them, embarrassed them, but they had to answer it, out of discipline.
Finished this a little cavalier, by Christian charity, he ordered to serve them food. How hungry they felt!… They thought of the Apostles' journeys, the suffering, contempt and humiliation endured for love of the Master and the fervent desire to bring his message to all, as he had asked them. They thanked God and went to look for the rented villa, where they were to settle.
They found her at last. Creak his moldy door and a chapter of privations and sacrifices capable of putting his vocation to the test was opened. The house was close, there was only abandonment and lack in it. Several Sisters had to sleep on the floor, with a penetrating cold that could not be remedied, a suitcase with bedding had been lost during transfers and only turned up a year later. How useful it would have been that night.
That circumstance of authentically Franciscan poverty in which they had to begin extolled the merits and value of the foundresses. They came equipped with faith in God; in their baggage they had no riches. They had to eat in shifts: the crockery and cutlery donated by generous people were insufficient and the provisions given allowed them to survive. “We saw Sisters cry from hunger and need” –said a chronicler– Raise a work from nothing: a challenge that they had to face with enthusiasm.
They came armed with mystique; they had no political or ecclesiastical recommendations. Knowing that they had been chosen to undertake such a savage undertaking and that they were obliged to God and to the Congregation tempered their soul for the fight In this atmosphere of evangelical humility, the Colegio Santa Teresa de Jesús was born.
Our deep acknowledgment of gratitude and admiration to its deceased and present founders. Their sacrifices were the firm pillar to build a work that today we crown with the golden brilliance of its fifty years. The generosity of Christian ladies such as Doña Isabel Magola de Ortega, Doña Cecilia de Barbosa, Doña Aminta de Carrasquilla, Doña Carmen de Solano, of priests like Father Pérez and Father Arturo Domínguez, Tertiary Capuchins, of the De La Salle Brothers like the Brother Estanislao León, of the Apostolic Nuncio of Bogotá, allowed us to endow the house; Mrs. Susana de Garzón and her husband Mr. Aparicio Garzón, who gave away market and took it to the Sisters' house "suffered with the Sisters without being able to do everything."