We (my Mercy Centre family and I) stumble through life… never knowing the lyrics nor the music to the songs that every new day brings to each of us… never knowing the storyline of each sunrise or sunset.

The Bourbon St. Restaurant and Oyster Bar is holding its 16^th Annual “Fr. Joe Maier-Mercy Centre” Charity Golf Classic on Friday, March 11, at the Royal Golf & Country Club. Please join us as a player and/or sponsor. You can also contribute to the post-tournament auction. There are many ways to help, and all proceeds will go for our children’s shelters and slum education programs. A link to more details, visit bourbonstbkk.com. Tele.: 02 259-0328/9.

The Bourbon St. Restaurant and Oyster Bar is holding its 16^th Annual “Fr. Joe Maier-Mercy Centre” Charity Golf Classic on Friday, March 11, at the Royal Golf & Country Club, 12 Noon, Shotgun. Please join us as a player and/or sponsor. Or you can contribute to the post-tournament auction. There are many ways you can help, and all proceeds will go for our children’s shelters and slum education programs. A link to more details, visit bourbonstbkk.com. Tele.: 02 259-0328/9.

Klong Toey, Thailand’s biggest urban slum, is comprised largely of rickety lean-tos. Some of these look onto fetid sewers; others have open doorways leading onto the area’s complicated tangle of sois. As children play in these densely populated streets, many a mother or a grandmother etches out a living through jobs such as selling noodles or mending clothes.

It is not easy to find our Yenakart Mercy Preschool on any Bangkok map, tucked away, as it is, in an obscure slum community beneath an overpass on the way to Papadaeng. But somehow a bicycle tour company – Recreational Bangkok Biking – stumbled upon our Yenakart school several years ago, and they have been supporting us ever since. Today they lead a group of Madam Ambassadors from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Mexico, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and South Africa on a visit to our Yenakart school. Our teachers received a generous donation, and our school children danced, sang, and, of course, as they always do, hula-hooped with unbridled joy for their guests. Also, as captured below, the kids enjoyed a few games of paddy cakes.

On the morning of January 8, 2011, the Archbishop of Bangkok Frances Xavier Kriengsak Kovitvanich lead a group representing ten local Catholic Churches in a charity walk in Lumpini Park to support our Mercy Centre. Over 1,000 adults and children joined in the walk, including our own Mercy children and their House Moms and Dads. After everyone crossed the finish line, our children demonstrated their skills in Taekwondo, music and dance to the assembled crowd.