Sister Jacinta Ibe sees it as destiny that she would arrive in North Haven, a town where she found the home she knew would lead to a life to educate and be around children.

“Everyone has his or her destiny that is prepared by our good Lord. I believe here in North Haven is the destiny that God has himself arranged in a special way, because North Haven is a very unique place,” Sister Jacinta says. “It’s a good place to raise children, it’s a good place to accomplish whatever career you have in life. And it is a good place to live a well-standard and dignified life.”

Sister Jacinta is the director of Sacred Heart of Jesus Daycare-Preschool-Kindergarten, which was granted its ownership as a school by the Bishop of Hartford in 2018. She oversees the facility and the children who bounce jubilantly around its colorful rooms. Since the school opened in 1982, she and her other Sisters of Sacred Heart have taught their young learners about the invaluable powers of “love and kindness.” Many of their lessons revolve around formative forces in a young person’s life, such as shaping their own destiny. It means a lot to Sister Jacinta when she hears from people she taught as toddlers who have now grown up and graduated from high school.

“We get a lot of phone calls from parents telling us, ‘Sister, I’m becoming a lawyer, I’m going in for medicine, I’m getting my degree.’ We share their joy,” she says. “They still remember the love and kindness. When you believe in a child, the child believes in himself or herself.”

Those values and the ability to take action is what the international Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—which Sister Jacinta and her colleagues at the school are a part of—bring all around the world.

“As a pontifical congregation, we have in our charism an apostolic life mission. We are in Asia, Africa, we are in Europe, we are in India, Madagascar. We do education to the children from infants to college level,” she says. “Also, in all the places we are in the Third World countries, like in Africa, Asia, we have orphanages. We go to the interior parts of the world and bring Christ with them.”

Globally active and minded in her life, Sister Jacinta considers herself a person of triple citizenship. She says her personhood resides in her birthplace of Nigeria, her spiritual home of Italy, and her physical home of the United States—the latter of which she is a naturalized citizen.

During her time working with the most impoverished peoples in the world, Sister Jacinta discovered that aside from the way the Western World views poverty—with little to no material possessions—there is another, more holistic form: spiritual poverty.

“You may have everything, but you are not happy, because you don’t have that source of joy. In [Nigeria] and India and the Philippines, you see a lot of poor people who do not have money to get the necessary things they have. But the little they have, they are very happy,” she says. “You see them joyful. They don’t have the light, but even in the darkness, they are very, very happy, because they believe in God, and they trust his love and kindness.”

Sister Jacinta believes that “love and kindness are [the] actualization of faith, because faith without kindness, it doesn’t have any meaning.” She says that the community of North Haven is a place where that conviction is found.

However, Sister Jacinta says that conviction can only be realized when an individual has what she calls “the strength of the will.” She feels the most important way a person can realize their destiny is through hard work, the rewards of that work, and the motivation to persist.

“One thing I have discovered in my aging time is that ‘the strength of the will’ is the source of the individual,” she says. “The fruit of our efforts increases ‘the strength of the will’ to do everything we do with love. If you do not have that good will, you will not be able to accomplish anything.”

On a desk in her main office sits a white water bottle that Sister Jacinta has had for five years. She uses it as a small, but effective metaphor for that mantra.

“It’s my will to take care of it, so it will serve me more. And if I don’t take care of it, it will cost me money to buy another one,” she says. “So, when you don’t take care of this, you lose [the will] fast. But if you take good care of it, [the will] will last.”