Author: Zeng Dieulv

It was a great joy for us to be able to obtain from a donor some funding to assist two of our refugees to get small businesses going in recent months. The one is importing and selling peanuts. The second one is barber shop. It is so admirable and encouraging to see our young people, with very difficult backgrounds, rising to the challenge of making a success of their lives – being creative rather than acceding to despondency or hopelessness. We thank our anonymous sponsor and wish our young men well with their admirable endeavours. So anyone wanting fresh unsalted peanuts, you know where to come! And a hair cut? Well, sorry, you may have to travel too far!

We are hoping to have another weekend get-away for spiritual enrichment and fun at the Comboni Mission, Maria Trost in Mpumalanga over the long weekend 21 – 24 September. We will this time study Pope Francis’ new letter to Christians on the universal call to holiness, entitled “Rejoice and be Glad,” as a follow up to our last weekend. Pope Francis goes to a lot of trouble to compile these letters to instruct and uplift us. Do we read them? This is an opportunity! The venue in the Eastern Transvaal is so beautiful, providing plenty of opportunity for walks and relaxation. The photos were taken at our last weekend there. If anyone is interested to join us you will be very welcome, but please contact Diana soon.

 

 

We were very blessed in late 2016 to receive money from Germany for education to support a large number of scholars and tertiary students in the academic year 2017.  Unfortunately, that was a once-off donation, but we are still doing our best to assist 23 young people with schooling this year and 5 with tertiary studies. We thank our loyal supporters at St Richards’ Church in the UK, who every year, organise fundraising projects for us.  We thank in particular Mick and Penny Finn who offer their beautiful garden (see photo below) every mid-year, as the venue for a garden lunch. They raised a substantial amount last year which has gone towards our education project 2018.  We thank also the parishioners of St Richards for their loyal support. So, it’s back to school, back to studies and we wish all our students the very best for the year ahead.

 

Princess was brought to us as a 4-week-old puppy by our Angolan orphan boy in 2004. See photo below. We had not planned to have a dog, but there she was, the most beautiful puppy, who could resist that? Jacinto looked after her for several years until he moved back to Angola where he now lives.  Since then Princess adopted our Riccardo as her soul mate.

 Princess lived with us for 13 years.  Everyone loved her and she was as much part of the family as anyone else.  Towards the end of 2017 her legs began to give in.  It got worse and worse and our hearts became heavy. The inevitable happened: in the end she could not walk at all and would cry, presumably with pain, or out of frustration. It was cruel to keep her alive in those circumstances. We had to put her down. The second photo was taken just before we took her to the vet to say goodbye, one of the hardest things we have ever had to do at Mercy House!

Thank you, Princess for being such a valued member of our Mercy House family. We will never forget you.

Well, this does not happen often and especially for us at Mercy House. But it was a very great joy for us all when our Richard married the lady of his life, Revinah, on the 7th of September 2017.  The church service was very dignified and the reception too, was marked by quiet reverence and joy.  Richard and his lady met at work and are now endeavouring to build up their own business called  “Peanut City,” importing and selling peanuts. We wish Richard and his lovely wife everything of the best for their future and would like him to know that we also miss his presence at Mercy House very much.  See photos below.

 

In late November we made an appeal in several church bulletins for help with Christmas gifts as well as schooling.  Several people offered to pay school fees, others offered to take over book lists, and then there were those who helped with Christmas gifts.   It really is a huge undertaking to provide gifts personally labelled and chosen for around 70 people on Christmas day, let alone the lunch!  But thanks to kind donors this was possible.  Every year Rosebank Union Church gets gifts for us from Santa Shoe Box, for the children.  But we have many young adults and they too were well catered for.

 

A special thank you to Tarryn and Lee, Jade Carr and Nicole, seen in the photo below, who came with a laden 4×4 on Saturday, the 16th December bringing many expensive gift items.

Then there is Lauren and Leo Lucca, who provided soccer boots for Joshua (seen wearing them in the photo) and a soccer ball, plus other gift items.

Mala Somers  also came with gifts and help with a booklist.   Felicity and David Borland and many others contributed suitable gifts and hence to our Christmas joy. Thank you so much. May your generous response be rewarded in the ways that you need it most.  In the photo below you can see our co-worker, Nozizwse, and others wrapping gifts in the week before Christmas. It was a huge job!

As we wanted a special blessing on our New Year at Mercy House, we asked Father Jude to celebrate Holy Mass at Mercy House on the 4th of January. As always. it was a beautiful occasion. Father is seen in the photo below at our celebration.