Love Mercy

A SYMBOL OF FORGIVENESS My friend Julius has every right to be angry and bitter. Julius was stolen at age 13 by Kony’s rebels, forced to be a child soldier, he walked 100miles to a rebel camp in Soroti in Uganda’s North East, he was subjected to watching innocent victims maImed right in front of him as a “desensitizer” to evil, as he ran for his life with 15 other boys from the rebel camp he looked back to see that 9 of them hadn’t made it- they were hit by bullets from a government plane flying overhead that mistook them for being rebels, returning home he listened to the stories of orphans who had fled their village after their parents had been killed, he watched in horror one day as a bus just ahead of the bus he was on was bombed by rebels- all 75 people were killed. And then the heart wrencher, his mother, walking innocently along the road during the height of the war, trying to find food for her family, was shot by rebels of Joseph Kony’s army. She lay bleeding for thre...

We have your Christmas gifts sorted this year, with so many options to choose from you are sure to be able to find the perfect gift for someone special this Christmas! 1. The Horse Market Bags Market bag, $40.00  These beautiful leather and jute bag make the perfect gift for that trendy person in your life... They are MASSIVE and so handy to throw all kinds of junk in and get you through the day. Not only that, but they will set you back a cool $40, with $25 going straight to Love Mercy to our Cents for Seeds program, buying a woman in Uganda 15kgs of seeds. You can buy them online here. 2. Gift Cards These glossy cards make the perfect gift for someone who already has it all, and has a heart for others! You can purchase them on our website here , and select to print them at home or have them posted to you. A Cents for Seeds card is $25, and a Goat gift card is $50 or $100. If you opt to have your cards posted to you, you will also receive a cute little pac...

Caitlin's personal thoughts   With just over one week under my belt after Uganda, I have finally had a chance to process and put into words some of my personal feelings on the trip.    These are just my own quiet thoughts, and do not necessarily reflect the views of LMF.   This trip I had the absolute privelage of leading a team of people, most of whom  had never been to Africa before. Even though it was my third trip, many times I felt as though I was experiencing things for the first time right there with them. The age old issues of  Africa came up once again for me. The main theme I found I wrestled with was the tension of helping one or helping many.    At the clinic dedication, a lady grabbed me and led me through crowds of people to her sick grandson.  I couldn't understand what she was saying, and no one was around to translate, but I could make out  the word "malaria" and he didn't look healthy. I had actually s...

Visiting the women's beans crops in Barr village A highlight of our trip was visiting the village of Barr, where the women have picked up our Cents for Seeds program and done amazing things. Through their own direction, the 350 women split themselves into geographic groups, and elected 3 leaders to represent them and to guide them through the program. We met with these leaders and encouraged them to continue their great work. We saw the crops of the woman on the right, an elederly lady with many grandchildren. Eunice, in the white top, is a leader of her group, and is an inspiration to many of the women. The latest report from the program suggests that it is very successful indeed. Florence, our agriculturalist reports: "One of the women we talked to is growing rice. We visited her garden and found that her rice is doing very well However, floods were reported at the beginning of the growing season and this affected the crop. She says that these floods were almost de...

Karen entertaining the nursery age kids Our program that we ran with our 18 kids in Lira Town was so successful, (you can read about it here) we thought that we should run it in Lira town as well. With a slightly modified program in hand, altered to suit 400 kids instead of 18, we drove into the village with ours packed with soda, a bag of rice and a ball and a rope. When we turned the corner into the compound, not one of us could believe our eyes. The 400 kids we had expected turned out to be 2000... Panic swept over our team of 18 as we quickly did the maths and realised we were vastly outnumbered. Miraculously, with the help of a friendly man who came along to check out what we were doing (and turned out to be a retired PE teacher who most of the knews already knew and respected) within 30 mins we had the kids broken up into age groups, split those groups again, and 2 leaders took about 400 kids each to run activities with. I was with Le Tibben, a nurse from Sydney who was...

 In August, Love Mercy Foundation had the absolute honor of being selected as 1 of only 9 finalists in Project Inspire's "5 minutes to change the world " contest. This contest is run by the United Nations Women's organisation in Singapore, and to be amongst such incredible company was a dream come true for us... our little ole project, right up there with the world's best... who'd have thought! Anyway, Eloise and myself weren't able to attend the finals in Singapore as we were in Uganda, however we sent our very able representative Rachel in our stead. Rachel did much of the research the contributed to Cents for Seed's success, so who better to send than her! Here are some updates from her on her trip: S ingapore is a beautiful city—basically an Asian Dubai—that is addicted to gargantuan shopping malls, global commerce, and air conditioning. Brrrr! It’s much too sterile for me to ever live there, but it was a nice Western vacation from...

Tug of war with the boys  We began our second session - this time talking about "strength" in the harsh heat of the afternoon on Friday. We started with a brilliant demonstration of strength. We bought 3 yards of rope and  set up a tug-of-war. We started with two strong boys against each other, and then added  more and more people but only on one side. The game made everyone laugh and led to lots  of different teams: kids vs adults, girls vs boys etc. Andy began the session by stating "on our own we may not be strong, but together as a  team, we can be strong." this was a clear way to communicate a strong message of the  importance of unity. Then we explained that being strong is not only about having big muscles. Strength can  be on the inside as well as on the outside, and being strong means making good decisions. Andy used the example of two coke bottles. He took one and shook it very hard, then put another unshaken bottle next to ...