Mary, the superior general of the congregation, suggested Sister Saint Théodore for the task. Although Guérin was unsure of her ability to complete such a mission initially, she agreed after considerable discernment. Guérin later remarked that a sentence from the Rule of the congregation convinced her to answer the call to immigrate to the United States: "The Congregation being obliged to work with zeal for the sanctification of souls, the sisters will be disposed to go to whatsoever part of the world obedience calls them." Founding a new order in Indiana On 15 July 1840, Sister Saint Théodore and five companions (Sister Olympiade Boyer, Sister Saint Vincent Ferrer Gagé, Sister Basilide Sénéschal, Sister Mary Xavier Lerée, and Sister Mary Liguori Tiercin) departed from France to sail to the United States. After a treacherous, nearly two-month-long journey across the Atlantic Ocean, the six women traveled by steamboat and stagecoach to reach the dense forest of Indiana. On 22 October 1840, Guérin and her companions arrived at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, a small, remote village in the wilderness in Vigo County, a few miles northwest of Terre Haute. For several months the sisters lived in a small frontier farmhouse with the Thralls family, along with a few postulants who had been waiting for them when they arrived. Guérin, the foundress and superior of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, a new order that was separate from the one in France, became known as Mother Théodore. Life work Guérin expanded her service to God after her immigration to the United States in 1840. She settled in western Indiana and became the devoted leader of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods congregation. Also, Guérin and the Sisters of Providence opened several schools across Indiana and eastern Illinois for the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana, as well as ministering to the needs of orphans, the sick, and the poor. Educator In July 1841, less than a year after they arrived in Indiana, and despite their meager resources, Mother Théodore and the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods opened Saint Mary's Academy for young women. The academy was the forerunner of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. Guérin had doubts that the new institution would succeed. As she reflected in her journals, "It is astonishing that this remote solitude has been chosen for a novitiate and especially for an academy. All appearances are against it." From the time of