Restart! A new new year

The expression may seem redundant, but it expresses what the sixty-three young people gathered at the Winter Restart experienced. The event, held from December 30 to January 2 in Nocera, Umbra (Italy), offered young people a different new of year celebration, with moments of prayer, formation, fraternal coexistence and ending with a pilgrimage to Assisi.

Usually, the turn of the year is marked by the memories of the year that passed and by the resolutions full of hope for the new year that is to come. But, surely, living all this in the midst of a strong experience with the Risen Christ is incomparable, as the participants affirm.

“I arrived with a great thirst and I can say that I was quenched. I return home with the awareness that this experience will, in time, bring its good fruits” declared Manuel Pasquino, 26 years old. Gabriela Loana went to Restart at the invitation of a friend and did not regret it: “I thought it would be the best way to end the old year and start a new one in the presence of God, I needed clarity about my life and about the decisions I had to make In this new year. I arrived with high expectations and knowing that God would not disappoint me. But, to my surprise, those days were much more abundant than I could have imagined or expected.”

Starting a new year at Restart was also important for the Shalom Community missionaries. They had the opportunity to serve the young participants, to listen to them and testify to their own friendship with God.

Thus began not only a new year in the lives of so many young people, but a true new life, thanks to the encounter with the joy and power of the Gospel.