Mercy House Storefront and Visit to David's Home

After several attempts and some delays, on Wednesday I finally received the keys to the corner storefront space of Mercy House. It's a very nice, fairly large space in an excellent location that can be used for a variety of purposes. We hope to begin using it this week for our meetings with the youth leadership team which is preparing for the Bread of Life diocesan Eucharistic youth retreat at the end of the month. The group has worked very hard learning the praise and worship songs we will be using on the retreat, and has made pretty amazing progress, especially given that English is the third language for most of them. Mercy House will really make its "inaugural voyage," though, when the visiting team of friars and lay missionaries arrive later this month. It will be the site of several afternoon public evangelization events in Torit.






So, yesterday, Dennis Kiyimba (Ugandan lay missionary), Liwaya David Ukoo (a member of the youth leadership team) and I arrived at Mercy House armed with brooms to give it a thorough sweeping. We swept not only the floor, but the walls and ceilings as well. On the ceilings were the most old spider "skins" I have ever seen in one place. When we left the place was really beginning to look usable and welcoming.






After finishing the cleaning we took David to his family compound where he showed us the little hut he had made for himself using his own hands. David is an exceptional young man from the Pari tribe in Lafon. His family had to relocate during the war, and he spent a number of his teenage years at the large Sudanese refugee camp in Kakukma, Kenya. He shares his house with two other men, including a handicapped soldier for whom David is in the process of constructing a separate hut. As we prayed a blessing there, I couldn't help but think how similar this house must be to the house of the Holy Family where Jesus lived. I couldn't help but feel, too, that the Lord was smiling upon it.