My name is Rino Montanaro, I was born on 1995 and I want to share with you how I met my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ five years ago. I was born with a illness which, since the beginning of my life, has forced me to sit in a wheel-chair because I am unable to move my limbs correctly. When I was born, the doctors thought I was dead because of my illness, but my mother realised that I was alive and, so, I received help. When I was six I went to a special college for disabled children and there, seeing that there were people more unfortunate than others, I realised how cruel life was and I started to have questions in my mind without receiving any answers. I stayed there for a few years because I was the 6th of 11 sons and it was hard for my mother to look after me.

But when my brothers grew up, I came back home. I was not a happy boy: why could I not run together with my brothers? Why could I not speak like normal people, to express what I was feeling inside? Why did I always have to depend on others and not be free to decide when to wake up, or to wash myself or to eat when I wanted? Why? Why? Why? … A brother of mine died during his military service: was it murder or suicide? This is one of the several questions which persecuted me (and also the rest of my family) worrying me day and night. And also here, no answer. <<God, where are you?>> I cried. <<But, do you really exist? And if you do, why are you so unfair?>>. I felt so angry inside that I needed to pour out my feelings to that God who I had heard about, but didn’t believe in or I considered unfair and far away from me.

How often I wanted to die! But the Lord, with His mercy, gathered every one of my tears and heard the cry of my heart. My brother Claudio had been set free by God and had given his life to the Lord. He started to speak me about Jesus, the man who had suffered upon the cross for my sins and carried my sufferings, my pains and my illnesses there. At first, I didn’t pay any attention to what he was talking about: how could this God of love allow so much suffering in the world? But the persistence of my brother and his evident change in his life convinced me to go to church with him. The people I met there were different from others I had known before. For the first time I felt loved and not compassionate. Yes, God’s love was taking place in my heart and I went out from that place with a new joy inside that I had never felt before. The anger, which I had had in me for so long, had disappeared and little by little I realised how unfair I had been accusing God for all my problems.

From that moment on, the Holy Spirit began a work of healing in me so that I started to consider things with God’s eyes. I realised that the Lord works in people’s lives only when they have completely surrendered themselves to Him and gives them gifts of peace, joy and love: only when all humanity has surrendered itself to God will, we wont see evil disappear. The 25th August 1995 I was baptised devoting myself to the church to follow my Lord every day of my life. I have received a lot of promises from God, and I am sure that He will accomplish them all. I want to be an instrument in His hands every day to bear His light to those who are still in the darkness of suffering, that Light which doesn’t need words to describe it, but just to shine through our lives.