One of the many joys in leading church, is watching the ebb & flow of church life, and how some people are planted in for the long haul whilst others are with you for just a short time.

Today at The Gathering we had the privilege of sending Delena (& her husband John) off in prayer (we prayed our best prayers), and love to begin a new life in the Eastern Cape in a town called Buffels Vlei. 

2023 was another good year for reading, though I read fewer books than in 2022 (I fell short by four books).

Oddly enough, my favourite books of the year were the final four, consisting of: Russia by Antony Beevor, Conspiracy to Murder by Linda Melvern, Iran by Michael Axworthy and the most excellent Embracing Defeat by John Dower.

The Gathering has been supporting two local Soup Kitchens in nearby Macassar for over two years now, and we've built up a great relationship with Beatty and Mercia who run them from their homes.

So at least once a month I get the joy of delivering a load of food to each of them, and I have to say that it is a real privilege and a blessing to be working with them, supporting them and providing for them.

We were quite amazed but very blessed to receive a solitary Christmas card this year, but then we looked at the envelope and realised it was posted on the 16th of December last year!

And yet, somehow it has managed to sneak its way through a very broken South African postal system (to call it a service would be to overplay its abilities), and even managed to get redirected from the Somerset West post office to our address in Strand. An impressive feat given the state of the post office.

Rescued Rocks

Recently I dug out a bit of the garden to make a new flower bed, and I was very happy with the result (see Percy Thrower, I Am Not).

A week later on a walk with Daisy, I noticed the municipality had dug up a bit of land, and had left a pile of rubble awaiting collection for the landfill.

We were thoroughly blessed at our first Festive Soup Kitchen on Thursday, as Joel came along to photograph the event for us.

As ever, his photographs are truly stunning and he perfectly captured the heart and essence of The Gathering's Soup Kitchen.

Things are getting exciting at The Gathering as we prepare for our three festive Soup Kitchens, beginning tomorrow.

We'll be serving 200 litres of home made Pea & Ham Soup. As well as serving our regulars with the usual packet of instant noodles, each recipient will receive a yummy home baked cookie, and the school age kids will each get a goodie bag containing a few school supplies together with a some sweets.

Between the Old and New Testaments there is a 400 year gap in which the voice of God was not heard.

It must have been tough for the Hebrews to carry on in their worship with no sign of life from God.

Then the Angel Gabriel spoke to Mary and the silence was broken.

Suddenly, for those who were listening, life was full and rich with the blessings of God, and where religion may have been dry and dusty it was swept through with the awesome grace of the living God.

Fetching Water

The story of The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen is a long and varied one, and over the eight years that we've been running it, we have had some interesting issues and obstacles to deal with and overcome.

Today's particular obstacle was perhaps the strangest to overcome... 

The water in Firgrove had been off since 6pm the previous night and it still wasn't on at 11am when I needed 100 litres of water to get ready making the soup.

Shortly after we moved into our new home just over a year ago, I went on a recce around the neighbourhood sizing up which gardens might donate a cutting or two to our rather barren garden.

I collected many cuttings over a few weeks, and gently nurtured them into sturdy young plants, and today we managed to dig out and plant our long desired and planned new flowerbed at the front of our house.

Starting today, I have challenged The Gathering to join together in reading a chapter of Luke each day, so on Christmas morning we'll know exactly what Christmas is all about and will be keeping Christ in Christmas..

Why not join us too..

Meatoplasty

In answer to a few questions...

On Monday I underwent minor surgery on my ears, the procedure was an ear meatoplasty, which in simple terms involved the surgeon removing part of the meatus in the opening to the ear canal.

For several years now I've been battling with my hearing, especially in situations with a lot of ambient noise, but also recurring ear infections that were driving me insane. 

I went to see the supposed top local ENT surgeon a few years ago, but for whatever reasons he wouldn't listen to me and said I just needed the build up of wax removing. In essence he made me feel pretty stupid.

It's a great blessing to see so much food stacked up in the church office/kitchen, especially knowing that Paula negotiated such a great deal with the shopkeeper that we got +/-1700 individual packets of noodles for the princely sum of R1.60 each (7p each in Blighty). In the local shops a cheap packet of noodles would normally cost around R5 each (22p).

What a blessing. Thank you LORD!

This picture warms my heart as it captures the very heart and DNA of The Gathering.

We don't run our Soup Kitchen as an evangelistic outreach, and we put no conditions on who can or cannot receive soup, we serve all comers.

The reason for this is that we use our weekly Soup Kitchen as a way of thanking God for all He's done for us and as such we want to share those blessings with others. 

The Gospel

I wasn't supposed to be preaching at The Gathering this morning, but events in the week meant that it was over to me, and as ever it was a joy and a privilege to share the Word. 

During the week I had briefly contemplated giving our Gathering over to an impromptu Testimony Sunday, but decided against this because I knew we would be low on numbers this morning, and partly because I knew I was being lazy in not preparing a word.

Well before I even got up to preach, God had interrupted our Gathering spectacularly and it turned in to an impromptu Testimony Sunday with testimony after testimony being shared.

Happy Place

Once again I find myself in my happy place, and today I'm especially happy because I get to use our new 100lt pans for the first time.

Today I'm making two hundred litres of delicious creamy vegetable soup, which hopefully will be a real blessing to those that come for soup.

I've said this before, but my greatest joy in our ministry is raising up and releasing others to serve the Kingdom for God's glory.

So it was pure joy and a real privilege to allow two of our members to share the Word as part of our Seven Minute Challenge.

What made it even better was the fact that Jubilant had asked a few weeks ago if she could also lead The Gathering's worship on this Sunday.

Just wow!

New Pans

Today is an exciting day for The Gathering as we finally got new larger pans for our weekly Soup Kitchen.

We've been making 140 litres of soup each week for a while now, and even on our quieter evenings, the soup has all gone within thirty minutes, meaning we have had to turn some folk away.

Testimony Sunday at The Gathering is always a joy and a blessing, and this morning was no different!

The stream of testimonies of God's goodness just kept flowing. What was clear is that most had been having a tough year, but each acknowledged that it was only by God's awesome grace that they had got to where they were and were blessed because of His loving kindness.

Thirty-Two

Thirty-two years ago today, these youngsters said "I do" to each other and embarked on a crazy mad adventure that has had so many twists, turns and plot changes that if it were a film nobody would believe it.

Thankfully however, we got to enjoy the ride together and grew old together. Today these youngsters are very different people, but we grew up and old together, celebrating and embracing the changes along the way, and that has been an absolute joy.

It seems so normal these days to just get on with life regardless of whether we have electricity or not, and we've certainly learnt to make a plan for those all too frequent occasions when the power is switched off.

On Thursday it was the turn of The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen to once again enjoy the inconvenience of loadshedding.

Welcome to Loadshedding Corner.

Yes, we actually have a corner of the house dedicated to just keeping various items charged and running for  when the power goes off.

So far in 2023 we haven't had a single day without loadshedding, and recently we seem to have graduated from mostly being in Stages 1 & 2 to mostly being in Stages 5 & 6 which often means we get to enjoy four hours of uninterrupted blackouts at a time.

This is what church is all about!  There was such a buzz at The Gathering yesterday as we prepared soup, hosted our Homework Club and launched our first go at offering free haircuts to any men/boys who wanted. Add in to this the fact that we also took food to the two Macassar Soup Kitchen's The Gathering supports and it really was an amazing day of blessings!

We are really looking forward to doing something a little bit different at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen this week...

Following a conversation with one of our Soup Kitchen regulars - who has recently started gathering with us on Sundays - in which he asked for money for a haircut, we got to thinking about how we could help without giving him money. The Gathering has quite a strict policy on not giving financial handouts for a number of reasons.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28

Sometimes it's hard to fully grasp the reality of this scripture, especially in the midst of difficult and trying circumstances.

That was a lot of carrots needing to be prepped for The Gathering's Soup Kitchen tonight...

Homework Club

We are thrilled that The Gathering's Homework Club has restarted. 

It's actually in its second week of the new school year and already we're full with quite a long waiting list.

We also have quite a lot of Gr7s from the local primary school asking to join so we are going to have to look at ways of accommodating them too. What a brilliant problem to have!

It's not all sunsets and ice creams, sometimes we get to see the sunrise too.

I'm trying to get a regular pattern of early morning walks going and though I've been a bit lackadaisical with it thus far, when I do manage to take Daisy out early we have a great time.

We are super proud of Eli and his Matric results today.

He's passed his National Senior Certificate with flying colours, getting an A equivalent in Maths and Bs in CAT & LO. 

He qualifies for university admission, but he's busy chasing his dream of joining the British Army, so maybe Plan B one day...

On Thursday we had our third and final Festive Soup Kitchen in which we once again served a delicious homemade Gammon & Pea soup.

Once again the soup went down a storm with many appreciative comments from our regulars.

It has been a real joy, pleasure and a privilege to be able to treat our Soup Kitchen regulars to three special soups over the last few weeks as we've done our best to celebrate Christmas with them.