In June 2018, my husband and I moved from Florida to a college town in Pennsylvania where three friends from the Movement had been living for several years. These friends moved away just as we arrived--so one day I called Father Medina to ask him to suggest a school of community I could connect with online. He said, “Online? Why? Start with your husband and then invite other people.” I thought, Who should I invite? I don't know anyone. But what he told me opened me to people I met.


I had invited a couple I met at the grocery store for dinner, and they were the first ones I later invited to School of Community. After eight months we were nine. One day we had dinner at the house of one of these friends, and, while watching everyone laughing and playing table football, I asked myself, How did we arrive at this? I did not make these friendships...


One of these friends is an Italian engineering professor, and recently I told him about a meeting we had in the U.S. with a family from Cometa, five families living in communion in Como, Italy, who are involved in adopting, fostering and educating children. He said, “I know Cometa. In April 2018 I read an article about them in The New York Times. The article touched me deeply, and I wondered if I could become involved with them. So, although it felt somewhat crazy, I wrote to them and I asked them if they could use someone like me, a teacher, if I were to move back to Italy.”


I was astonished and I asked him, “Do you know that the friends in Cometa belong to our Movement?" I could not believe that he had desired to go to live at Cometa and that he met us. Remembering the call with Father Medina, I realized that there is in me the temptation to think that true life is elsewhere, while God is waiting for me with a life that kicks and overflows with surprises, exactly where I am.


Rossella, State College, Pennsylvania