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While recounting our walk as a family, it spontaneously comes in mind to think of “plural,” because thanks to God today we are many in our house.
At the beginning of our friendship, Mother Elvira proposed, above all, the Community as a possibility to know ourselves in the truth and to give a personal answer of faith to God before involving someone else in the responsibility of our life.
 With this commitment that matured in a love without personal interests and not dependent only on us - one that united us in prayer and sacrifice - we feel that we have constructed a solid foundation for our relationship, not only pretty feelings.
When someone asks me what was the moment that I knew Shannon was the woman, the right spouse for me, the mother for my children, my thought runs to the moment in which in tears I observed her as she succeeded in convincing a “young mother” to not abort, because if she would only continue the pregnancy she would have taken care of that life if it was necessary. In that moment I understood that I would spend the rest of my life with a woman who is capable of loving, defending and welcoming life, in its totality and beauty - and not only life that, as a gift from God, we would be able to create ourselves in the future as well.
We got married in the missions where we had the luck to be able to live like an open family, welcoming the children that God allowed to knock at the doors of our Fraternity. We were able to serve and adore the biggest wealth on earth - life - and with this we realized that those abandoned and forgotten children were offering the biggest service, not us. We began to enrich ourselves with a patrimony of inestimable blessings by rejoicing, suffering, and at times becoming “crazy” with them.
The Lord is faithful and responded quickly to our little trust by already giving us back a lot; and in these years we have been able to rejoice at the arrival of Simon, Joshua, Anna Lina and a few weeks ago, little Tommaso.
During the last year in the missions in the house of Juan Pablo II in Peru, we dedicated ourselves at a personal level to above all find a balance as a family in the prayer, or how we can speak more conscientiously in our home, living our choices with “more coherence.”
We are experiencing that, in daily prayer said in family and in the Eucharist that we are fortunate to be able to receive everyday, we find peace. Preoccupations that at times occupy our thoughts transform themselves into real trust, and we receive from God the capability to live with fullness the joys and sufferings of everyday.
A few months ago we returned to Italy, called to live our missionary lifestyle that begins above all within the four walls of our family environment and then extends itself to those who surround us. We are grateful and fortunate to be able to make this journey and allow our children to grow in a healthy environment, surrounded by people that, despite daily defects and mistakes, maintain a fixed gazed at He who gives us the strength to get back up.
We thank Mother Elvira very much because she pushes us with coherence and strength to be a testimony of the light that we have encountered; and above all we thank God because He gives us strength everyday to be able to welcome and live this calling with joy.
(from "Risurrezione" magazine - September 2007)
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