I met CL in 2002 in Rio de Janeiro, where I lived. I had gone to confession to Father Gilson and he told me, “Come and meet my friends.” At the time, I was finishing high school and I met Father Paulo and Inês. I didn’t have anything in common with that group of teenagers, because, on top of being a student, I had a job. At one of our meetings, I met Maria-Helena (Lena), a nursing school professor at the public university. After that, I never saw her again. I moved to another neighborhood, and when I happened to be in the vicinity of Copacabana, I would attend Mass at Father Paolo’s parish. I enrolled in a private university, and after a year and a half I was able to be transferred to a public one. In 2004, during a class, a familiar face stepped into the classroom. I tried to remember where I had seen that person, and then I got it: it was Lena. On my second day of classes, I sat in the first row. All of a sudden, the professor stopped and said, “I know you. Where are you from?” A little clumsily I answered, “From the Movement.” She was very happy to see me again and from that moment on we became friends and I re-encountered the Movement. We started having School of Community at the university, saying the Angelus, and having lunch together. In 2006, I graduated and moved to Brasilia. Everything was difficult there; I wanted to see those faces I had left in Rio, and I had to travel 40 miles to go to School of Community. I stopped attending the meetings, but I missed them. Life could be good or bad, but I was missing that “something.” Lena told me, “Stay close to Sêmea.” In March, I started following Lena’s suggestion and many miracles started happening. Cinzia and Anna Maria came to my house for dinner and talked about their experience in the Movement to six couples of my community. At the end, Anna Maria said, “Christ always fulfills our desires,” and I knew she was right, because for the past three years I had wished for a moment like that to happen and it finally did. She also said to me, “Be faithful, even if it’s just you and your husband.” We decided to start a School of Community group, and the first meeting we had only one couple, who had not attended the meeting with Cinzia and Anna Maria. We have now met five times: my husband and I, Marinete and Nazin. At our last School of Community, I was sad because once again nobody new had joined the group. Nazin and Marinete told me, “To us, it is as if this room was crowded. We did not come just to make you happy; we came because this is for us.” It’s incredible how Christ responds to our reality and how He is present in everything.

Andréia, Planaltina (Brazil)