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It has been an enormous blessing to have had our USA volunteers, Paige and Emmanuel, with us for the past 2 years or so. It would take pages to summarize what they have done: it is countless.  They have just moved from Pretoria to Johannesburg, where they will be living until they move at the end of the year, and in the process wanted to shed some of their furniture. We have benefitted from this.  The photos show some of the items donated, the most popular being the “egg chair” which even rocks. Danny has claimed this as his own – see him on the chair – we know that he would become rich if he charged everyone R2.00 for a sitting!  Thank you Paige and Emmanuel for your wonderful support and for giving so much joy to Mercy House.  We are also happy and grateful to announce that Emmanuel has now accepted to become one of the trustees of Mercy House.

In mid-May, after serving as Mercy House leader for several years, our Eddie Dunia decided to hand over the leadership to persons of the younger generation. He will remain with us and serve on our house committee, but in a slightly different capacity. As it is quite a big task, we decided to have two leaders. Dieulv Zeng and Emmanuel Masengo will now be co-leaders. They took on the challenge with great zeal and enthusiasm, and have so far been doing wonders. We are extremely grateful to have such fine young people in charge of our house.

Emmanuel’s passion is photography and he has put a huge amount of dedication into achieving his goal of excellence. We have been able to assist him with a first-class camera for his work. He works free-lance, doing photographs and videos for weddings and any special events. He also gets short-term work from different videography companies, all being valuable experiences on his journey to perfection.

Zeng is in a similar field, and his skills are vast. He does our website, any graphic work that we require, he is helping with the republishing of our book, Tracing the Divine, he helped with the flyer for John’s catering business, to mention just a few of his skills. In addition, he is a computer boffin, and still manages to be doing a 3-year diploma in Digital Animation at an excellent animation school.

Putting all our Mercy House skills together, a picture emerges of talents that weave a beautiful mosaic of our interesting life at Mercy House! We thank God for this….

It’s been 26 years since our Mercy work started. Not SURPRISING then, that a face-lift was necessary and we got stuck into this mid-year. First, we replaced the much-worn wooden lounge floor dating to around 1940, with beautiful new tiles. This has made a huge difference to a dark room. See photo. Next on the list was replacing the sink surround with a granite top. See photo. We then renovated the outside toilet walls and shower with tiling and repainting. Lastly, we repainted our driveway and front wall. A very big thank you to our Danny who played a big part in these renovations voluntarily and also to Builder Eric who we employed to do the tiling. Our home looks so much better now.

Weekly food delivery by St Vincent de Paul Society

To add to all the above upgrades, we also purchased a brand new fridge, with half deep freeze and half fridge. This was essential, since the fridge we were using was already secondhand when we got it and was not working properly and in addition, the doors were not closing well. This brought joy to the residents and is especially important with the hot summer temperatures. 

The photo shows our Masengo, who is the food and fridge keeper, packing food donated weekly by St Vincent de Paul Society into our beautiful new fridge.

All the above, of course, thanks to our benefactors who deposit into our account monthly. Truly GREATLY appreciated. May you be blessed.

Food awaiting disposal

Emmanuel packing food into the new fridge

Brillant painting our entrance gate

Emmanuel cleaning the kitchen

It is our custom to have a ”Cleaning Day” once every few months. These days are always great fun and remarkably community-building. Our early spring cleaning on 9 August proved to be just that. We always start with cleaning bedrooms and then everyone is given a specific task for cleaning the common areas. There was an almost overwhelming spirit of fun, joy, enthusiastic working together, music blaring into the bargain of course! Everyone seemed happy to do their specific job. Once again we were reminded that Mercy House has been greatly blessed with a group of really fine, excellent, fun-filled and responsible young people. The photos below show some of our residents busy doing their thing. The crowning glory, of course, was sitting together at the end of our work, to enjoy a pizza lunch together. As someone said: It was the best cleaning day we have ever had.

Shadadi cleaning play centre chairs

English classes for new arrivals was started as long ago as 2012, at Bienvenu Shelter.  Soon, as numbers grew, it was moved to the Catholic cathedral, where it came under the umbrella of Pastoral Care.  In April 2020, when Lockdown 5 was implemented, the sister-in-charge closed the project.   Now that the main threat of Covid 19 is significantly reduced, and new arrivals still need to learn the language to survive, we have restarted the programme, with very small numbers, at Mercy House and are proud to offer this service for free! Diana is teaching and Eddie translates, however, we also have some new orphans from Eastern DRC and Burundi, whom our Danny is teaching, as they are complete beginners and, coming from the same home area, Danny is able to translate into their home language, which helps. Classes will continue in December and resume after new year.

Danny was brought to us from the eastern DRC when he was only twelve years old. His whole family was killed by rebel soldiers one night, but Danny survived having hidden under his bed. He fled to his aunt, but found soldiers already there and saw them beat his uncle to death. The aunt fled to South Africa, where she got into a women’s shelter, and we took Danny in. Soon, the aunt moved her family to Zimbabwe, hoping for resettlement to Canada, but it never happened and Danny came back. 

It is a great joy to have Danny with us again. He has been proactive in helping in every way he can possibly think of, e.g. repainting walls, etc., in line with our renovations, and in helping other newcomers to learn English. He loves music and is teaching himself guitar and keyboard online with great success. Thanks also to Michael Kaplan, a music teacher, who is assisting him.  

Many people emerge with bitterness having had experiences like our brave Danny. But he is remarkable, He has emerged as a very strong character and carries no bitterness. He spreads a joyful and fun-filled atmosphere in our house community. The photos show him when he first came to us on the day of his First Communion and now, with his beloved guitar!