The camp had a clear purpose: to show that between family life and residential care, there was a third path—a life built on friendship.
Preparation was meticulous. First came the search for a house. A friend of Fede e Luce, mother of four children, offered us her beautiful home in Alfedena, Abruzzo, for the month of July. Ten beds, a kitchen, three bathrooms, a living room with a fireplace, a large garden where we could pitch five tents for friends and some more independent young people. The house sat in the center of town, close to everything we needed: a pharmacy, a doctor's office, shops.
Next, we invited friends to join us for one, two, or three weeks. Fifteen said yes. We three adults—a mother, a nun who was a nurse, and a young priest—decided we could welcome seven or eight disabled young people while maintaining a ratio of two friends to every young person. We also tried not to schedule the most difficult cases in the same week.
Together, we set a specific goal for each day, organizing activities so that by week's end, everyone would have made small progress in his or her own way.
We kept to strict schedules: turns preparing evening prayers, shopping, chores, activities, and games to strengthen body and mind. We took walks where those who moved easily helped those less experienced.
At the end of each week came celebration: improvised costumes, games, songs, food cooked over a fire.
Everything went well—so well that it's hard to say what went wrong. We might have gone to bed earlier to be fresher the next day. We could have used more adult helpers for certain delicate needs. A group more evenly matched in age and type of disability might have simplified the practical side and made it easier to apply our educational approach. But these are small things.
Each morning at Mass, and each evening around the fire singing the Our Father, we felt God's mysterious presence in the silence among us. For this, and for everything else—thank you, Lord.
Mariangela Bertolini