L'Arche Kent from the inside

In the life of the house, there are trips and journeys which are necessary -  for example,  when assistants travel back to their home country to get a new visa or to see family. Recently, our house leader and one assistant took a holiday like this. At the same time, an assistant returning from holiday suddenly found they couldn’t get back for personal reasons and, at the same time, we had a number of new assistants who were just learning their roles. Suddenly we were short of assistants. So from one day to another we had to change all our weekly plans, the daily routines of the house, outings and everything else. We laboured harder, longer and progressively became more and more tired and exhausted. Then, we asked for help from the Community. We just hoped for a little bit support to help with busy times in the house, but we got so many offers of help, even from assistants from other houses who didn't know our house routines. They came to help late in the evening, early in the mor

 I remember going to Church one Sunday morning with some members of our house when I first started as an assistant. I sat next to Annie, one of our core members at church. Annie is a warm, loving lady who enjoys company though she needs quite a bit of support to stay focused on where she is and what shes doing. I was nervous. Sometimes she isn’t aware that people are praying around her or sitting in silence and will ask many many qestions repeatedly. We’ve tried many ways to support her with this – answering her questions very clearly and simply, encouraging her to enjoy the peaceful service, explaining the importance of a prayer and the Mass for other people, but sometimes Annie doesn't understand other peoples needs when she has one. If I’m honest, I didn't want people looking at us or her when she is speaking during prayer and lacked confidence in finding good ways to encourage her to allow others to pray in silence. I thought about different ways to help her be calm an

My name is Jacqueline, I’m German and I have been a L'Arche assistant since March 2009. I live in Little Ewell , a community house in the countryside. James asked for people who want to write an article about life in L'Arche and since I read some examples he gave me, I can’t stop my mind composing new articles about this community life that I want to share with you. So I made some notes and then decided to write them down immediately before I forgot something. Every day I'm here there are more impressions of life and community that I want you to know about. The fact that I find it so easy to see meaning in my life in community tells me that I have found something in L'Arche life which is valuable and something I hope is a strength for me. Working confidently with people with a learning disability is not a gift that everybody has, perhaps including me. But I've learned that everybody has something he or she can do as well or better than somebody else – it doesn&#