Sister Martha Thibodeau decided at an early age that she was going to be a nun.

“I felt called by God back in the fourth grade,” says Thibodeau, a retired parochial school teacher and a nun for more than 50 years. “I waited until I was 21 and that night I told my parents, ‘I’m now of legal age. Will you please let me become an Ursuline nun?'” Though her father wasn’t happy about it, there was nothing they could say.

“He just looked down,” Thibodeau recalls. “My mother did all she could to dissuade me, but it didn’t work.”

Thibodeau helps out in the Bargain Basket thrift store at St. Martin de Porres in Lewiston. She is often in the back room washing donated items that will be sold to help raise money for the homeless shelter upstairs. On this day, she polishes kitchen utensils that will be sold 10 for $1 to celebrate the thrift store’s third anniversary.

Thibodeau was the sixth of 13 children. Her mother worked at a Salvation Army thrift store and in lieu of payment accepted clothes for her children. “As a little girl, I loved rummaging in the attic, going through old trunks,” Thibodeau says.

She makes the 20-minute walk from her apartment at Maison Marcotte to the Bargain Basket three days a week. “I have a long stride and I pray as I come down and I get a ride back by a volunteer like my mother did at the Salvation Army,” she says. “I never imagined I would live like that (in an apartment), thinking I would end my days in a convent.”

At Maison Marcotte, Thibodeau leads the Rosary during Mass three days a week. “It’s a beautiful little place, very simple,” she says of the chapel on the third floor of the independent living facility.

While Thibodeau sorts through items to be cleaned, she finds something she fancies and thinks about keeping it for herself.

“I love this little gold spoon; I think it’s so pretty.”

She also thinks a child would love to own it, and puts it back in the box with the other utensils. “They’re going to be 10 for a dollar. Can you imagine that? Buying all these nice handy things for 10 cents?”