Testimony of Béatrice and Patrick

November 2023

A longer mission than those we did during our holidays, we dreamed of it, putting our professional skills to good use too.

The Catholic Delegation for Cooperation sent us for 3 months to Anaphora, a Coptic community in Egypt, in the desert between Cairo and Alexandria, a place created to welcome and raise everyone". Béatrice was sent as a nurse: "On the first evening, a sister was unwell, her blood pressure was taken in the community kitchen, I had crossed the border... when a dozen sisters arrived from right and left so that I could take their blood pressure too, the ice was broken... both to care for (the community and children from the second chance school), communicate, sympathize and also let myself be guided to weave, make candles and jewelry, paint. "As for me, Patrick, I started with 3 weeks of integration in the carpentry workshop: making furniture, especially religious furniture. What ingenuity to recycle! Believing I was working on making a piece of furniture, it ended up being a food smokehouse!

I was doing an international press review during our daily meetings. I participated in the second chance school for adults (English and world-opening courses). How difficult it seemed to me to learn a European language for Arabic speakers, which is only equaled by my own learning Arabic! Seeing the evolution of self-confidence through their oral expression was a great satisfaction.”

Both in our workplaces and in our leisure areas, immersion in community life has offered us some wonderful encounters: religious, volunteers, passing guests of various nationalities; they have been our nuggets and have accompanied us in the stages of our missions.

Beatrice and Patrick