I am Sr. Noella Pereira and have been in the UK for 7 years. Before that I worked with intellectually disabled children in Dilkhush Special School , Mumbai India, and was also involved in training teachers who wanted to work with these children.

My mother had two brothers who were Jesuits, one was a lecturer in De Nobili College the formation house for Jesuits in Pune, India, and the other worked with tribal people in Dahanu, a small village on the outskirts of Mumbai.My mother was very close to her brother who was a missionary, and so we spent quite a lot of our holidays with this uncle. They were very interesting holidays. We mixed with the Adivasi, tribal children and were always surprised by these people who lived with so little. Also we were in awe of our uncle who lived a very simple life, and was always available if his people needed him. He was priest, father, teacher, doctor, and also government officer seeing that they got their rights. And this meant that when the people needed to go to the hospital at night he was ready to help as he had a jeep.

My Parish was not a Jesuit parish, but I went to school in one of these parishes, and because of the close ties with the Jesuits we often went for mass and belonged to groups set up by the Jesuits. I was an active member of the CLC and when I finished school I Volunteered to support one of the sections at Seva Niketan the Jesuit house that was the centre of the CLC. I was one of the people who prepared people who came to the city looking for jobs in the city. These people had some English but did not speak fluently enough to face a job interview, so I gave English classes, using the newspaper as our text. In this way the clients did not only gain fluency in English but learnt to talk about current topics. This was a very important experience for me. I enjoyed hearing about how they managed to speak and impress the interviewers enough to get the job, and shared their joys and frustrations.

My youngest brother was intellectually disabled and so when I felt drawn to dedicate my life to the Lord I was attracted to the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Congregation that came to India at the invitation of the Jesuit Provincial in India to work with people who are intellectually disabled. One of the Jesuits at  St Xaviers College, had pioneered a study on the education of people who were intellectually disabled. There was only one school in India, in Mumbai so he got our sisters to train in Dublin, before they came to India. Our sisters began with this school and later set up their own school.

Till then I did not see any pattern in what was happening. But I feel that the Lord was leading me to a Congregation and it had Ignatian Spirituality. With time I realise how the Lord was leading me and that my love for the handicapped which was kindled by my love for my brother now widened to a special vocation.

Being with people who are disabled marked my whole life, it was a choice to work with the poorest of the poor, but it spread to those who in different ways needed a helping hand, first it was with the families, and then with those who worked with us and also through the Teacher Training Centre, which served people from all over the country, most of whom were not Christians.

Here Ignatian Spirituality helped a lot. One thing that we learn about prayer is to use contemplation. People who were Intellectually disabled do that very easily, and helping their parents to use this type of prayer to face situations that they found very difficult to accept helped a lot. This is for me one of the greatest gifts of Ignatian Spirituality. And now that I work in a school as a Catechist, I help prepare the weekly Mass, and this method of Prayer is something that children pick up easily. They love to think that Jesus is with them, and he is sharing their experiences, and they talk to him. I hope that these simple experiences help them in future to grow in their relationship with Jesus, and make choices that will be ones God wants for them.

Noella  Pereira  aci.