The arrival of our baby girl confirmed our place was at Lazarus

We are Soline and Simon, we are both 40 years old and have been married for 14 years. We are the support family for the Lazarus home in Marseille, which opened in September 2021.

Last year, we were looking for an opportunity to get involved in something together and decided to join Lazarus.

On a personal level, we had been trying to have a baby for 14 years, and we wanted to On a personal level, we had been trying to have a baby for 14 years, and we needed something to take our minds off it. We had already been working with a charity helping people in poverty and felt we wanted to do something a little different as a couple.

We weren’t looking for something to fit in to our schedules, on top of our professional, family, and social commitments, we were looking for something that would change our lives completely.

So, the prospect of joining Lazarus was an exciting one. We took some time to think it through carefully.

On the first day of the first lockdown, we emailed Lazarus expressing our interest in becoming a support family. Two months after sending that email we found out we were expecting a baby! We’ll never know why it happened just at that moment.

The arrival of our baby girl felt like confirmation of our place at Lazarus. Teresa is a source of wonder for our homeless friends and flatmates. We see faces light up when people hold her or lend us a helping hand. Thanks to Teresa, we get to experience the joy of giving yourself to another.

Joining Lazarus was a real leap into the unknown for us. We had to leave our quiet life and a certain sense of security behind. But we knew it would lead us to immense joy. And it really did.