This weekend, the Holy Spirit Trappist Monastery in Conyers, Georgia celebrates 60 years

Holy Spirit was organized in March 1944 as an offshoot of Gethsemani, another Cistercian monastery in Kentucky. Most of the 20 founding monks had never been in the Deep South.

Father Luke Kot, 92, says the locals didn’t know what to make of the strangers in white robes and black cowls. “Some people thought we were German POWs,” he recalls. “The black people looked at our robes and thought we were KKK.”

It was a rough beginning. It rained for days. The monks slept in a barn. When they sat down for their first meal, the table flipped over and dumped food all over them.

“I was not depressed,” Kot says.