Even as a girl, Magdalena Meier was certain: when she grew up, she would go to Bethel and become a deaconess. "The only problem back then was that I didn't grow old quickly enough," she says with a smile. Today, the deaconess looks back gratefully on a wonderful life in the Sarepta Sisterhood and celebrates her 100th birthday on 17 March.
"When I was 15, I took part in a big youth meeting in Zionswald. I would have loved to stay right there," Magdalena Meier remembers. After spending a year in a day nursery in her home town of Bünde, she finally fulfilled her heart's desire in 1938: she went to Bethel as a helper. At the beginning of the 1940s, she trained as a nurse and joined the Sarepta Sisterhood. A few years later, she was ordained as a deaconess and passed her social education exams.