Mercy News

August 31 was the night our annual Cultural Awards Evening was held. It was a fantastic night of singing, dancing, instrumentals, drum corp, cheerleading and handbells. But most importantly it was recognition of the hard work and dedication put in by many students and staff over the year so far. Award categories included Bronze, Silver, Gold, Ensemble Excellence, Cultural Spirit and the main gong - Cultural Award of Excellence.

Congratulations to all students who took out an award and an extra congratulations to Mikinley Sugars and Cobi Davis for taking out the big one.

Book Week is a significant event on the annual calendar for Mercy College. The theme for 2018 was ‘Find your treasure’ and our annual dress up day (run by the Mercy Book Club) was held last Friday. Book Week gives us the opportunity to focus on literature and reading, to just sit and ‘ponder the strange power that a small bundle of paper, glue and ink can have, and that a book’s potency is in how they make us feel’ (Noonan, 2015).

To capitalise on this, the Library ran two quizzes – one quiz was Guess that character from a book and the questions were given out each day over the course of the week, one question per day, with each question gradually getting easier.

The other quiz was Match the teacher with their treasured book. This quiz was quite difficult but it was good for the students to see the vast array of treasured books.

Tayla Husband, Year 8 student, identified a service opportunity and has enacted on this. In conjunction with CQU’s Outward Bound Program, Tayla is collecting donations to go over to Cambodia. Donations will be distributed by nursing students to people in need.

We are also asking for donations of shoe boxes in preparation for the Stella Maris ‘Shoe Box Appeal’, where we fill shoe boxes with goodies and send them to seafarers who are away from their families at Christmas.

Justice@Mercy are living Laudato Si to end the term, teaming up with Mackay Regional Council to help with some coastal revegetation work at Town Beach. Over four weeks, students will be planting, weeding and watering along the sand dunes, helping to stabilize this section.

Thank you to everyone who has helped to crochet poppies – we have now handed over our massive pile to contribute to the Mackay Remembrance Day display, in conjunction with ZONTA.

Staff are also enthusiastic about helping to make a difference in this world. We have made our second donation for the year to the Share the Dignity campaign – collecting sanitary products which will go to women’s shelters in the Mackay region. And staff have helped to save 57 lives this year by donating blood and plasma.

Recently a group of our Year 10 students, travelled to the Capricorn Coast PCYC to take part in the annual ACTS (A Chance to Share) camp. Here's some student reflections.

My favourite activity during ACTS Camp was the question and answer session with the priest. Nicholas Schloss

My favourite part of ACTS Camp was the time spent in our small groups with our NET Leader. I learnt that religion isn’t just about prayer, it’s about people coming together under one belief. I found it challenging to be open and share with my peers. William Crowley

At ACTS camp I learnt that to be a team you first need to work together and something that challenged me was not being afraid to share my talents, without people judging me. Ebony Jordan