Jesus Knocks at My Door

By Anna D., Volunteer in Romania

My community sisters and I decided to stop by the social block to see one of our dear friends Margarita.  When we arrived, we realized that we had forgotten her apartment number so we waited by the door to see if someone could let us in. After waiting for five minutes, a lady named Agnes came to open the door, but she wanted us to go into her apartment so we could help her with some things. After walking into her room, we were all struck by what we saw. 

There were clothes and moldy food on the ground along with cigarettes covering the entire surface of her room. She asked us if we had a knife because she had packages of meat that she could not open. We helped her open the packaged food and we left. After leaving, I realized that Agnes was completely helpless. 

After hours of pondering what we had just seen, one of my community sisters, Elisabeth, said that we should go back to her apartment and help clean. I was not looking forward to this, but I knew it was the right thing to do. After getting there we realized that we had forgotten gloves, so we decided to go up and ask Margarita if she had a pair and luckily, she did. 

Margarita comes from a Romani (gypsy) family. She suffers from a mental handicap and bipolar disorder, and after twelve years of friendship, we are somewhat of a family for her. She decided to come down and help us clean Agnes’ apartment and she did it with such joy and gratitude. 

We saw another side of Margarita that we hadn’t seen before. A beautiful side. She kept saying that she had never met anyone poorer than her until the moment of cleaning the apartment and yet, she was so willing to help clean this lady’s apartment. We asked her why she was so willing to help, and she said: 

“Well when you knocked on my door, I heard Jesus’ knock on my door.”