By Wendy Royston

A quest to care for themselves in older age and benefit the wider community has led the Benedictine Sisters of Mother of God Monastery in Watertown to a ministry of “bookend care.”

As plans came together for a dynamic assisted living center to serve the aging needs of both the monastery and the community, a need became apparent for an educational facility for Watertown’s youngest children. Now, The Village of Harmony Hill and Our Little Village Learning Center exist side-by-side on the sisters’ square-mile campus, bringing together senior care, early learning and a faith‑rooted legacy to create an innovative model of intergenerational care.

“This is about creating community with a ‘little “c” catholic,’” said Prioress Sister Barb Younger, who has taken a leadership role in the project’s development and in the Watertown community. “I didn’t go seeking this. God did it.”

But what God has created is an economic engine that not only allows Watertown residents to live, learn and work in the community, but also creates a sense of ownership and fellowship along the way.

Just over two years ago, the monastery employed just the 29 sisters. Now, more than 120 employees serve at Harmony Hill, a place steeping with grace.

“For as long as we are able, we will create the space for God to show up and for people to experience God,” Sister Barb said, noting that “the extraordinary and the ordinary show up all the time.”

Though the life enrichment director at The Village and the educational director at Our Little Village often collaborate their activities to allow children and seniors to intermingle at least twice each month, merely being on the same campus has its benefits. Oftentimes, elders volunteer their time, rocking and/or burping babies or reading stories to children.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” Sister Barb said, stressing that just hearing the children play outside their windows or seeing the kids visit the sisters’ garden provides an endorphin rush to the elders, who often can be seen waving from their apartments or talking to the children. “This has done so much good for the seniors. … It brings such joy to my heart!”

And, at its core, those opportunities lend well to the Benedictine charism and mission, providing community, hospitality, dignity of the human person, intentional excellence and mutual responsibility. Without realizing it, the employees who work alongside the sisters in their ministries are exposed to what Sister Barb terms “human values.”

“In an unchurched world, where you’ve taken off the lens of religiosity, you’re giving them Jesus in those five core values,” she said. “And that is what Catholic social teaching tries to deliver. … There’s a genuine, living example of what it means for coworkers to be dignified with one another, residents and resident families. It really is quite above and beyond taking care of ourselves as sisters.”

The Village of Harmony Hill

The Mother of God Monastery was founded in 1961 as a daughter house of the Yankton Benedictines at Sacred Heart Monastery, which had reached 500 sisters. In 1964, they purchased a one-square-mile tract of land just south of Watertown on U.S. Highway 81. When they founded the community, all of the sisters were 20 and 30 years old. Now with a median age of 86 and just 29 sisters ranging from 66 to 101 years old, the Watertown cohort last saw a new sister join in 2014.

“We began to talk about how we could intentionally develop and use what God has given us—our resources, our values—to make an imprint on the world in our sunset years,” Sister Barb explained.

They began exploring the idea for a long-term care facility to complement the independent living center they’d opened in the late 1980s, but they struggled to find a partner.

“Benedictines take care of themselves. We could have put ourselves in long-term care facilities all over the state, but that’s not how we do things,” Sister Barb said. “We were financially sound and could pay for our health care and were funded for retirement … but we couldn’t provide the care ourselves. … We were about nine months from putting a for-sale sign in the yard” before Michael Klatt, a then-retired skilled nursing home administrator, entered the conversation in early 2020.

“With his help, we decided to build and then find a health care operator,” Sister Barb said. Four months later, the Good Samaritan Society expressed interest in managing the sisters’ operations, taking on the tasks of hiring, training and managing state regulations.

With a reputable management company at the helm and the commitment of an architect that was familiar with Good Sam, a groundbreaking was held in early 2022. Eighteen months later, the doors opened on the 91,000-square-foot facility, with room enough for 78 residents and spaces for families to gather, as well as rentable dining and community room spaces available to others who do not live on the sisters’ campus.

“We didn’t want to build something just for ourselves, because our time in the building is short … and if we need care, so do other people,” Sister Barb explained.

The Village of Harmony Hill features five levels of care, with the intent of allowing residents to stay on-campus for as long as possible.

“In all of the time that we have been there, everyone who has been a resident has left either because they needed skilled nursing services or because they passed away there,” Sister Barb said. “That’s what we wanted, that this would be people’s last move, and that it would be a home environment.”

The facility has maintained 89 percent occupancy since December 2023, a feat that is “unheard of” in long-term care. Intentionally designed with COVID-19 pandemic in recent memory, the facility was built so that community and infection control could coexist in the event of a repeat epidemic. It is split into four neighborhoods of 16 units each, with one neighborhood designated for residents facing dementia. Each neighborhood features a fully functioning kitchen and a dining room set aside for each neighborhood, with additional spaces set aside for unique purposes.

“Because we already owned the land, we didn’t have to squish it into a postage stamp size. We could create spaces where a grandchild might come and visit grandma and read a book together,” Sister Barb said, adding that the facility hosted 100 guests for Easter 2025. Harmony Hill, which is equipped with catering services, also hosts birthday and other gatherings. “Hospitality is a part of the design,” with the facility designed to ensure that “life continues around [aging]. Just because you need more care doesn’t mean that regular life should stop.”

Our Little Village Learning Center

While the sisters were in the thick of opening The Village, they were approached with a completely different prospect.

Little Blessings Daycare had been in operation through Watertown’s Family Worship Center for 29 years, and it desperately needed room to grow. The church’s pastor approached Sister Barb, who serves on the Watertown Childcare Coalition, about relocating the center, which had grown from 80 enrolled children to 300 in 18 months’ time, to the sisters’ land. If additional space was not found quickly, 120 children from 85 families would be without an early childhood educational opportunity.

With 14,000 square feet of underutilized space in two buildings, the sisters inquired with a contractor, who deemed the facilities as great options for the project, and a couple, who had successfully managed a chain of childcare centers in Sioux Falls.

In April 2024, a press conference was held, introducing the new nonprofit’s parent-led board of directors and announcing a need for $2.5 million to renovate the building and grounds that could house the facility.

“Our resources were tied up in the Village, so we couldn’t just write a check,” Sister Barb said, adding that “even if we could write a check, it wasn’t the right answer. Our mission is to help people help themselves, and a community challenge needs a community solution.”

At first, the initiative was met with resistance.

“Everyone knows how hard the business model is,” and potential investors feared that their investment in the facility would be lost.

The sisters decided they would attach a deadline to the plan. They secured a $500,000 SDWorks loan and petitioned the county and city to match it with a five-year stipend, pledging to match it themselves if the governing bodies committed. Local parents attended the county’s and city’s board meetings, instilling urgency in their need for child development opportunities in the second half of summer 2024. The governing bodies remained hesitant until the announcement at the end of the year that $1 million had been raised through contributions from local businesses, the Knights of Columbus, Cornerstone Methodist Church and Midwest Bible Camp.

With funding secured, Little Blessings closed its doors on the last day of the 2024-2025 school year, and contractors and community members pulled late hours—even on Holy Saturday—and contractors donated labor to ensure that the facility was ready for the fall 2025 school start.

“The only reason we could get there was because the community solved the problem,” Sister Barb said. “Honestly, it was kind of miraculous.”

The facility is now the largest early learning program in Codington County, serving as an educational home to 120 students, with room for 100 more, and boasting 16,000 square feet of astroturf and a 1,300-square-foot sandbox surrounded by trike trail.

“Everything has really come together,” Sister Barb said, adding that the teachers, who had expressed concern that it would come together in time, have provided great leadership in the transition, and their commitment is being rewarded. “They do [this work] because they love the kids, but they do deserve just pay.”

Sister Barb, who raised three kids of her own before joining the order, said she was appalled when she glimpsed at Little Blessings’ books, noting that some of the staff, who are required to earn an associate degree in human development or early childhood development, were earning as little as $12.50 per hour.

“That’s unjust,” she said, recognizing that the business model leaves very little room for fair compensation. “Your only income is from the parents, and they can only afford so much. Daycare is too expensive, but it’s not expensive enough, because it’s hard to pay the bills” while also offering fair wages, she said, adding that the sisters are not profiting from the business, because they are making payments toward their SDWorks loan. “We are figuring out every way that we can keep our rates as low as possible. … We are going to exhaust every funding avenue to get the staffing and results the kids and parents need.”

Developing plans

“We now have these two bookends of life that get to be together, and how we write the rest of those chapters between them matters,” Sister Barb said. “We want it to be intergenerational; we want it to be synergistic. We want it to be dynamic.”

As they look to the future with accommodations geared toward serving people in both the early and later seasons of life, the sisters have additional plans on the horizon to address the stages in between, with sections designated for single-family homes, twin homes and multi-family dwellings. Construction on the first 40-unit affordable apartment complex has already begun. In addition, plans have begun to partner with Lake Area Technical College (LATC) to provide an off-campus, dorm-style housing option that will answer some of the problems students and the community face, including a need for older homes to be renovated.

They’re also working on plans to house Start-Up Watertown on their campus, and they’re developing a “hot desk” concept for entrepreneurs to rent space and pool resources and staffing to get their businesses off the ground, as well as considering offering nonprofit business classes through LATC.

“We want young entrepreneurs to have someplace to dream and get some resources they can rely on,” Sister Barb said.  

Another development soon on the horizon will have children and adults looking “from the prairie to the stars,” as Sister Barb said her fellow Benedictine, Sister Jane Schoenfelder, said, with the installation of South Dakota’s Challenger Learning Station. The two-acre, space-themed educational center will offer hands-on experiences to encourage careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Just one Challenger Learning Station is being built in each state, and Watertown has been identified by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as an ideal location because of LATC’s reputation for preparing students for technical careers.

“Going to the stars is one thing, but you’ve got to have an education to get there, and there are other things to do with that education, too, that are meaningful and can keep you in South Dakota,” Sister Barb said.

Adjacent to the education center, Challenger Park will feature one of the National Science Association’s 1:150,000 scale models of the solar system. Just 10 of the planned 100 models have been produced so far, and the newly developed nonprofit overseeing the Challenger project has purchased one that will sit on 26 acres of the sisters’ virgin prairie.

“You’ll be able to stand at the sun station and get a feeling for the immensity and the grandeur of the heavens,” Sister Barb said, adding that the display will consist of 13 stations. It will help visitors understand that “we are this little speck in this whole, big, incredible universe.”

A groundbreaking for the Challenger project is anticipated for later this fall, and additional outdoor learning opportunities are anticipated to be found on the sisters’ square-mile in an all-seasons outdoor classroom similar to the South Dakota Game Fish and Parks Department’s Sioux Falls location, as well as five miles of walking trails.

While Sister Barb said the plan is for every bit of the sisters’ 485 acres to be used, the property’s three spring-fed creeks and other prairie features adjacent to Pelican Lake will go untouched.

“As we were doing this, we were trying to see how many problems can we solve,” she said, but “God’s green earth needs to keep working, even though we’re living there.”

All of the new development is centered on the sisters’ primary mission inside the original monastery, which was built in 1997.

“We wanted the chapel to stay intact,” Sister Barb said, “because that’s our prized possession and where we do our work—it’s where we pray.”

Photos courtesy of Brittany Petrik, director of communications and marketing for The Village at Harmony Hill.

 

Wendy Royston is a freelance writer and parishioner at Sacred Heart Parish in Parkston. She is married and has five daughters. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism/mass communication and sociology from South Dakota State. She owns Creative Content Solutions.