invited me to go to Mass in the Church of Saint Eugenie. Here I met Father Farid and the Franciscan sisters, Sister Salvatorina and Sister Marcelle.

I immediately felt welcomed as a brother, as a son, part of the wonderful family of the Santa Eugenie community. It was a grace, a great gift. I was able to live the periods of work away from home without forgetting the encounter with Christ.

The time spent with the Franciscan Sisters has made the awareness in me more certain that the company of Jesus is a great and unexpected gift, it is a real, concrete encounter and in recent years he became flesh in an even more vivid way thanks to the testimony of Sister Marcelle and all the sisters.

The charity lived in welcoming needy and abandoned girls to their house in Santa Maria gave flesh to what Fr. Giussani said to me: "... Taking an interest in others, communicating ourselves to others, makes us fulfill the supreme, indeed the only, duty of life , which is to realize ourselves, to fulfill ourselves… ”and again“… Christ made us understand the profound reason for all this, revealing to us the ultimate law of being and of life: charity. That is, the supreme law of our being is sharing the being of others, it is putting ourselves in common. "

Thanks to the company of the Franciscan Sisters, also the relationship with the colleagues with whom I shared this period of coexistence away from home has taken on a different meaning, in the daily attempt to focus on communion with others as a sign, as a circumstance given and not. suffered, a circumstance, at times tiring, which has strengthened the certainty that everything lived must be given for a greater good which is friendship with Christ.

I thank God every day for these years of communion lived with the Franciscan Sisters who, with their joy, their charity, their total love for Christ, have made me understand the wonderful prayer of St. Francis which I now recite several times a day. true and concrete:

God,make me an instrument of Your Peace:

Where there is hate, let me bring Love,

Where it is offended, let me bring forgiveness,

Where is the discord, that I bring the Union,

Where is the doubt, that I carry the Faith,

Where is it wrong, let me bring the truth,Where is despair, that I bring Hope,

Where is sadness, let me bring joy,

Where is the darkness, let me bring the light.

Master, let me not try so much to be consoled,as to console,to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to loveSince so it is:Giving you receiveForgiving that you are forgivendying that is resurrected to Eternal life. "

 I left Egypt for another destination, but I will always carry it alive in my heart, with immense gratitude.

                                                           Giovanni Angelo Scarpanti