“I lost my father when I was six years old. He died during the war,” says Ivona from Croatia. “That was a hard time in my life that caused me to become closed in myself. In 2003 I met the Focolare Movement and I experienced an atmosphere of love and joy, and I found the strength to face everything and love life even when it was difficult. On New Year’s Eve, at the age of 13, had a fainting spell and ended up in hospital. While waiting for the results of the tests, I suddenly noticed a small rosary in my hand. When I think of it now, I believe that it may have been a sign from God because of what I would have to go through. I was diagnosed with a form of emotional epilepsy resulting from the trauma of my father’s death. I cried for two night. One evening as I was praying the rosary, I felt that I wasn’t alone, that Jesus understood my pain. I seemed to understand the meaning of Chiara Lubich’s words about the moment of Jesus’s abandonment on the cross:  ‘What is His is mine and nothing else. Universal suffering is His and therefore mine . . . What hurts me is mine . . . Mine is the suffering of the soul beside me – that’s my Jesus.’ From that moment on my life went ahead in peace and joy, but mostly I was living it with Jesus. Through the illness, I experienced that Jesus Forsaken has illumined every darkness, as Chiara says, and accompanied every solitude. I accepted my illness and felt loved by Him.” “I’m Zin from Myanmar and I’m a Buddhist Gen. I’ve been at the Gen School in Montet, Switzerland since September. Whenever I tell people that I’m a Buddhist, they all ask me what it’s like to live with the other Gen who are all Christians. It’s easy for me to accept that we follow different religions. It’s only when the other Gen pray or go to mass that I realize there’s a difference. In all the rest we’re the same – sisters living in the same house. We like to love one another in accordance with the way that each one of us understands Love: in Buddhism it’s mostly a matter of compassion, politeness and forgetting oneself. For Christians it’s ‘love of neighbhbour’, ‘love of enemy’ ‘mutual love’ ‘love for Jesus Forsaken’. While noting the diversity in our manner of expressing love, striving to ‘be love’ as our common goal leads us to experience unity.” “I’m Lilia Mayrleny from the Maya Kaqchikel ethnic community in Guatemala, originally from the Patzun people. I’m a Kaqchikel/Spanish bilingual early childhood teacher. Kazchikel is my native language. My country is multi-cultural and bi-lingual. It’s multi-cultural because it’s comprised of four different cultures: Maya, Garifuna, Xinca and Ladino; and it’s multi-lingual because we speak  22 Maya languages. I met the Focolare Movement at the Gen4 meetings when I was a child. I try to bring the ideal of unity into my daily life. I study at university thanks to my parents who also live the Focolare spirituality and support my studies. This is a great conquest, because not all women in my community are able to pursue their studies because of the sexist culture we live in. In Maya culture things like truth, the rule of law, love and respect are cherished. At times I felt very alone without any answers to my questions. But, by trying to live the Gospel I discovered that sorrows and pain, disapointments and doubts, weaknesses, unexpected surprises and all the trials of life, including deception are the many different guises of Jesus who suffered the abandonment on the cross. Whenever I manage to recognize and love him,  the difficult situations are transfigured and peace blossoms in me.”