By the feast of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception that year, a pine board monastery had been completed. The work was completed in twenty-five years. Renowned for its coastal splendor, ante-bellum majesty, tropical wildlife and unvanquished spirit of progress and adventure, Georgia is the home of Jimmy Carter who became the 39th President of the United States. With its white cotton fields and red clay roads, dogwood trees and pine forests, Georgia was a rich environment to receive the new seed of Trappist contemplative life. With great vision, the monks of Holy Spirit Abbey landscaped their monastery with hard woods, cactus and succulents.
Stately magnolias line the entrance way and even bamboo trees grace a path behind the buildings.
A creek and natural spring continue to provide drinking water which is delicious. Ponds made by the monks add beauty and supply water for other uses. Realizing the sparcity of Catholics in the South, Dom Frederick sent monks to Georgia with the hope that their lives would witness to the beauty and the truths of our Catholic tradition in a manner acceptable and inspiring to Georgia's inhabitants of other denominations. Persons of all religious persuasions have found the abbey to be a center of exchange on levels of deep meaning and value for their lives. The fifty-room guesthouse is more often filled than not, and retreatants come from all parts of the United States and other countries to share in the prayer and work of the monks.