The first time in her life that Tracey Dugas, from Louisiana, saw a sister dressed in a habit was in a mystery movie about a convent. Today, Sr. Tracey, of the Daughters of St. Paul, tells her story in an eight minute video posted on YouTube.

Holding her guitar, the talkative and friendly sister explains how, after she saw the movie, she went to the library and took out books to find out about religious life. The video, with a shakey camera and poor audio quality, has nevertheless found its way into the hearts of more than 6,000 viewers in one year. Five websites and blogs link to this video, with one sending 100 clicks.

You can read 18 comments made about the video. One viewer responded, “It’s great to see people answering the call to religious life!!!” and another said she had some questions discerning a possible call to religious life, and this “vid” helped her.

It is interesting that this young woman discovered religious life not through the traditional route of growing up with sisters in her parish or school. On the contrary, she saw a sister in habit for the first time on the media.

Online videos are where it’s at. One expert says that, “More than 145 million Americans watched more than 13 billion videos in February 2009. … The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes, so the average online video viewer watched more than 5 hours of video.” Five hours seems kind of a high number to me, but then many people spend lots of time in front of the computer.

To learn about our two-minute video production service, contact Kevin Banet.