summer camps

The life in Swarga Dwar goes on as usual. For us who live here it is difficult to distinguish the monotonous form the interesting to be shared with you who are following us from far.

One new thing we can point out: this year in May, for the first time, we held two summer-camps. They were a kind of retreat for three days for boys and girls coming from the parishes for the purpose of personality development and leadership. The priest-in-charge of the youth of the diocese of Vasai has taken two groups of them to Swraga Dwar.

We keep telling that SD is not only a hospice and a centre of rehabilitation but an ashram, that is a place of spirituality. Never the less it is always difficult to keep together the three things, because leprosy and deformities always generate fear. But since we had discovered that leprosy patients are also prophets, we chose this difficult way of making an ashram with leprosy patients.

If God send messengers, his Spirit will find the listeners. In this purpose we are helped by the beauty of our place and by the fact of having a guesthouse. Since six years, during monsoon, we plaid host to groups of Italian youth of “Giovani e Missione”. For the first time, this year, we plaid host to these two local groups of thirty/forty youths. For three days they shared our life, our rice, our work and our ecumenical payer. It has been a little difficult to accommodate fifty people in the small room of Shanti Sangam where we have our common prayer in the evening.

For all those who come to Swarga Dwar we have prepared a small booklet in which we explain the messages and the spirituality of our ashram.[1] We are happy when some people take away the booklet with them. The Father promised us to translate the same in Marathi.

We hope that other groups will come to share and above all we hope that among them vocations to service may develop.

* The letter No. 50 has been used as Introduction

[1] This booklet Welcome to Swarga Dwar is published as second part of this volume.