“This  year, there have been a number of deaths amongst those who come to the Soup Kitchen. John was one who came to the Soup Kitchen for a short time in the mornings. On the few occasions that John came to the Soup Kitchen, he had a somewhat disconcerting habit of dropping his trousers. Staff variously had occasion to ask John to pull up his trousers and no sooner had he obliged but you would look around to see them down around his ankles again… After breakfast one day, John spent the rest of the day in the whare outside where guests sometimes wait, feeding the pigeons and again, with his trousers down around his ankles. Sister Cabrini came across the carpark. Sister Cabrini was not the first of the staff to come across the carpark that day and notice John, but what she noticed was not the feeding of the pigeons nor the fact that the trousers were down around his ankles. She noticed that his trousers needed changing and she brought him inside to help him to change and to get him some food and a drink. We called Jane, the nurse from Te Aro Health who came up to see John. In the short time it took Jane to come, John had disappeared. We didn’t see John again, a few days late he was found dead from an undiagnosed brain tumour. Sister Cabrini had managed to be present for John in way that the rest of us had not. We were so busy responding to the behaviour, we lost sight of the person within. Sister Cabrini was really living the Mission for John.”