TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS — When a group of Benedictine monks left Fontgombault, France, to begin Our Lady of the Annunciation Monastery of Clear Creek, near the community of Lost City, families from across the U.S. turned their eyes to Cherokee County.

Some, like Pat Ziglinski, formerly of Kansas City, turned their lives to the area.

“I knew of the monks through Kirk [Cramer] from years before,” said Ziglinski, who is lovingly called “Mrs. Z” by those who know her best.

“I went to France, and Kirk kept saying, ‘You have to go here [Fontgombault], you have to go here,” said Ziglinski. “I loved the monks, and felt they were a power house of prayer. When I found out they were coming here, I kept my ear to the ground to know when they signed the papers.”

In fact, “Mrs. Z” packed up and moved from Kansas City to Cherokee County six months before the monks of Clear Creek even arrived.

“I was the first one here looking for land,” said Ziglinski.

Available plots of land were too big, she said – about 100 acres – so she drove down about every two weeks searching for that perfect land.

“I was about ready to give up,” she admits.

But then, she stumbled across an opportunity to purchase a plot of land that was being divided up from one large plot.

“My name was written on it,” she said. “I had been a nurse in Kansas City – I had never done anything in the yard, never had animals. I was about 63 when I moved down, and I’m all of a sudden a ‘farmerette,’ going through a grand adventure.

Ziglinski feels as though the monks are a “power house of prayer.”

“They have a deep spirituality,” she said. “Their primary purpose is to praise God; to sing praises to God. The rest falls under that: giving themselves up to pray for America, for the world.”

Full families also followed the Benedictine monks to the area. Mark and Mary Sue Wheeler have five children, and moved to the Hulbert area from San Diego, Calif. Mark said his family is of traditional Catholicism, and children are home-schooled.

“We were eager to raise our children near a monastery like this,” said Mark. “For us, it’s perfect that it’s a simple, rural environment, where we can try to be self-sufficient, making our own food, raising our animals. We wanted to try to get back to that time when it was a simple time, simple way of life – not get caught up in the race for modernism.”

The monks, he said, spend their day reflecting on God and his creations.

“We were wanting to slow down, to have closer contact and be in touch with God. We knew they were hoping to come back to America [from Fontgombault, France], to start a contemporary monastery.”

Mark and his family visited Cherokee County.

“It was pretty much perfect for us. We’re in our fifth year here,” he said. We were in southern California, and it was a lot different there. They [children] love their goats, their chickens, going out to climb in the trees. They’ve made many friends of other families [that moved here for the monastery].”

Mark said the time period between the monks moving to Clear Creek and Saturday’s open house dedication of the facilities was “a unique period,” with interaction between the monks and the public. But he acknowledges and anticipates the future, when monks are more enclosed and focused on prayer and God.

“Benedictines are the perfect ones for setting that example,” he said.