By Musu Taylor-Lewis
All of the young women, who come to the Mercy Ministries home, are taken in completely free of charge. This is one of three founding principles given to Nancy Alcorn when she started Mercy Ministries over 25 years ago. It is an expensive commitment for a ministry that does not take funding from any government source, but the importance of the principle came through recently in the story of one of our Canadian residents.
She had applied to come to Mercy after years of struggling with a severe eating disorder and had looked at the possibility of going to a private eating disorder clinic in her city:
“They required a minimum stay of 80 days [less than 3 months] at the clinic and charged $600 – $800 per day. It would have cost my family $48,000 for me to go there and we just don’t have that kind of money”
The fact that Mercy was free brought her through the doors, but while at Mercy this young lady dealt with so much more than her eating disorder and in the process found her way back to the God she had rejected as a youth.
Her story explains the heart of why Mercy will always be free; after all, the God who gave Nancy Alcorn those principles, also gives mercy freely everyday to everyone of us, and Mercy Ministries is another way He extends his generosity to hurting young women.
Nancy Alcorn explains in her book “Echoes of Mercy.”
“Part of the reason for this of course, is that many of the girls who come into the homes do not have any financial means. What a tragedy it would be for a child to be killed because a young woman could afford an abortion but not a safe haven to have her baby.
Even more important to us, however, is our desire to represent the unconditional love of Jesus. There are quite a number of girls whose parents could pay to send them to Mercy Ministries. If we charged any of the girls, they would be tempted to think that we are trying to help them simply because we get paid for our services. We don’t want to give the accuser any opportunity to cause the young women to doubt our intentions”
Nancy Alcorn with former Mercy Residents
Mercy stays free because of the generosity of individuals and like-minded organizations that faithfully support the ministry.
The Canadian home is completely funded by donors in Canada. Currently matching funds, available to Mercy Ministries Canada doubles the monthly donations of all new Treasure Builders. Click here to find out more about this opportunity or to sign up as a monthly donor.
