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On the last weekend of April, we had 2 “We Love Mercy House” days. THE GARDEN AND DRIVEWAY WALLS WERE LOOKING VERY SHABBY. Instead of hiring builders we did it ourselves and it proved to be great fun. One resident, who was working as a builder in Sudan before he came to us, directed operations to make the place truly beautiful. AND WE FINISHED JUST ON TIME for our Holy Mass on 1 May.

Everyone worked together joyfully and enjoyed creating “Something Beautiful for God.”

(from left to right) Eddie, Donation, Douglas and Father Rafael

After our New Year’s Mass in January we were privileged to have 2 more Masses in this half year, on the 21st March, and 1st May, both public holidays. Our Masses always have a very personal and unique ambience and everyone senses it. We are hugely privileged to have the Comboni Fathers offer our Masses. In the accompanying photo, we see Eddie, Donation and Douglas with Father Rafael, a young Comboni Father from Spain. He currently is in charge of a large pastoral centre on Mpumalanga, named Maria Trost. He happened to be visiting Johannesburg for the weekend, to our great joy and benefit.

Importing and selling peanuts

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 and Jacinto

 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.

Richard and Revinah

Wedding Reception