It is difficult for me to describe my feelings in a few words, because I do not summarize the missions as a one-time feeling during the time spent there. It is something that changes the way you think, the way you see things, the ways you value life ...

Going on missions causes incredible happiness: the happiness that is achieved by giving yourself to others, forgetting about yourself, without caring about fatigue, without looking at the clock to see the hours you dedicate to others ... HELPING gives happiness, I have proven it .

Calcutta is a city that I am very fond of. After three years going, I don't lose the desire to repeat again and again. I feel very useful contributing my little grain of sand. I feel happy thinking that the patients we accompany will be anxiously waiting for the summer for the volunteers to arrive.

We make them happy by giving them a smile for no reason, just smile at them and make them realize that they are giving us the best experience of our life.

We make them happy by accompanying them, dancing with them, painting women's nails, shaking their hands and giving them affection. We make them happy by giving them a smile for no reason, just smile at them and make them realize that they are giving us the best experience of our life. We make them happy when they see us wash their clothes and clean their centers, because they see how we ease the work of the Sisters, and that comforts them. We make them happy by treating them without shame, speaking to them like normal people. Help them with whatever they need but without making them feel useless. Dance them a Macarena and teach them to dance and to sing. Hearing them sing even though they are screaming.

On the other hand, they make us happy, because for almost a month we are getting all the faces of the patients radiate in the center. And we are ensuring that the Sisters are satisfied with our help and thank us in the best possible way: with their prayer and their smile.

Children who were not walking and when you return the following year they are already walking, thanks to a physiotherapist that has been financed by this NGO. Children who barely spoke because they are deaf, and who greet you the following year, thanks to some wonderful teachers funded by the NGO.

It is incredible that this NGO gives you the opportunity to also work in one of its schools, for disabled children. Children who, in my case, I have been watching grow for 3 years. Children who were not walking and when you return the following year they are already walking, thanks to a physiotherapist that they have financed by this NGO. Children who barely spoke because they are deaf, and who greet you the following year, thanks to some wonderful teachers funded by the NGO. Mothers desperate for not knowing how to act with autistic and hyperactive children, and that when you return the following year they are happy and proud of their children, thanks to the help of the NGO.

And of course and the most satisfactory thing, the gratitude of those mothers, those teachers and those children, that we go every year and take them out of their routine.

If there is something in that city that also makes me fall in love, it is the little time in the afternoon, when you finish your work and escape to the Mother House for worship time. Entering there and finding the tomb of Mother Teresa gives you the strength to carry out the mission following the example of that GREAT person, who is reflected in all the sisters every day.

Thank you Calcutta for opening your doors to me.

Leticia Vargas Girón
VIS Foundation volunteer