One of our earliest relationships as a young church, from its beginning 4 years ago, was the one we had with the nearby shelter, which provides temporary lodging to area women and children on the way to finding placements in public housing. Many of those who pass through the shelter are in need of basic necessities to start out on their own and Mercy has campaigned for them by running diaper drives, collecting furniture and household goods, and providing manpower in moving people into homes with the supplies that have been collected.
We are also proud to have run several yearly events for the shelter, which have included a private movie night for the kids in partnership with the theatre and a Christmas toy drive to provide a gift for every child in the shelter on Christmas Eve. Our summer BBQ in Michele Heights Park was a favourite outreach event for many in our church, as well as the community, as we served free burgers, hotdogs, and pop and had the opportunity to develop relationships and share with others about our mission as a church.
Mercy Community Church was partnered with Ottawa Innercity Ministries (OIM) for
over 3 years. Many members of Mercy have taken OIM’s Urban Intervention Training, a
comprehensive course, preparing street-outreach volunteers for the challenges of working with
our street involved friends. Every week, the Mercy congregation donated supplies, including clothing and food (chocolate bars became a special collection for our most involved members to take out with them), which ultimately were distributed in the streets of downtown Ottawa. On several occasions we have had the blessing of assisting street friends, who recently gained housing, with furniture and basic necessities. As a direct result of our street-level activities and the relationships developed with our friends, Mercy had several individuals from the street community attending our services on Sunday mornings.
Mercy Community Church is the founding sponsor of this special needs hockey team, which has grown very well with our support and was managed tirelessly by Jim and Shana Perkins. Along with monetary funding, the church provided a great deal of volunteering time in all manner of tasks - from administrative to on-ice assistance - as well as cheering on the kids at their games and special events and labouring in set-up for the annual banquet.
Our church has worked with FFHM's homes in Baja, Oaxaca, and Morelia in Mexico and we provided support for our members who embarcked on mission trips to the area. We enjoyed a longstanding relationship with FFHM, as some of us worked with the organization for between 3 and 10 years and a number have sponsored children from the orphanages, as well as providing labour on the compounds, guidance and education, prison ministry, and joined the workers of FFHM in bringing some light to the lives of those in need.
Central Ottawa and its west-end neighbourhood of Kanata run food banks to distribute nourishment to those in need. They employ drop-off centres and grocery store collection bins for the community and many of our members bring regular donations. As well, the Condors have joined in the effort by collecting non-perishable food items to donate as the admission charge to special event hockey games, which have gone directly to the food bank.
Our church faithfully collected milk bags for over its last year and brought them each week to be used to make milk bag sleeping mats. Volunteers in our congregation washed, cut, and strung together the bags into balls like yarn, which others then crocheted into compact, extremely durable, washable mats for use in areas of homelessness, disaster relief, or extreme poverty. The eventual destination of our mats this year was a very poor district in Johannesburg, South Africa, and were distributed under the direction of a missionary organization that was visited by a couple of our members over the summer. The sleeping mats were an incredible success and we are proud to have been able to bring relief and joy to the lives of orphans so far away.