Jesus Caritas

Quinta da Fonte means life flows in abundance!

We are three to make this brand new start in a very multicultural, fringe neighbourhood. Most of our neighbours are from Africa especially Cape Verde or Gypsy families.

At every occasion there are village celebrations which are a wonderful opportunity to get to know the different cultures. We prepare food together, dance and play music. The people of Cape Verde are famous for their “batuque” which is a very ancient music from their country. There are different Churches and religious groups in our neighbourhood but everyone joins in. Even the Mayor and members of the Prefecture and civil authorities attend the celebrations. Aall want to work together so that the bad name of our area is forgotten as sadly it has a bad reputation for violence.

Carmela is lucky to have found work in a Christian Association run by the Evangelical Church for the elderly. Her job gives us an entry into the silent and dependant world of these elderly people of many different countries.  For eight hours each day she looks after their needs going from home to home, cleaning, cooking, helping them with their personal hygiene and shopping. We are happy to be able to have this very concrete link with another Church.

So often we experience situations of injustice around us which are not resolved, and where the strongest seem to have the last word. We feel  it is our call then to be there without power and open to all that life brings, open to the relationships that present themselves each day, open to the life of our neighbourhood.

We are discovering that it is possible to live together from our different backgrounds, beginning with ourselves in Community of different generations! Open to each other we can fight exclusion, and the labels some people carry and bring back into the community those who are ‘invisible’.

This new start makes me feel a few years younger and I can only say how happy I am to try and be faithful to the intuitions of Bethlehem and Nazareth in this new context. ‘How can I give back to the Lord all the good he has done for me?’