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.
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Dean and Paula in Blighty, autumn 2025 -
Dean and Paula pastor The Gathering -
Our beloved Palace - FA Cup winners 2025 -
The Gathering -
Baptising in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit -
Leaders preparing to serve at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen -
Soup Kitchen Xmas lunch
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Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng -
Thankful Thursdays -
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HOPE Home Based Care Team -
Gathering Ground -
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
Showing posts with label anniversary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anniversary. Show all posts
Today is our 30th wedding anniversary which traditionally is Pearl. Now I can't afford to give Paula a pearl necklace and she wouldn't want one anyway, but what I can do is share a pearl of wisdom...
Paula has already written the most beautiful post over on Facebook, so there's not a huge amount left for me to say, but if I could offer one tip for longevity in marriage it would be this: keep God at the centre of it!
Personally, it's been an awesome adventure with some incredible experiences along the way and I wouldn't trade a moment of it for the world.
I love you more than ever Paula!
Here's to the next 29!
XXXXX
For our Silver Wedding Anniversary last year I wanted to give Paula a gift that would last but also one that had a cost, not a financial cost, but a personal one. So, starting on our anniversary last year I gave Paula the gift of letters. No, I didn't give her the alphabet, though it would have been cheaper, easier and a whole lot quicker. No, what it actually meant was that I committed to writing to her every day for a year, sending her a letter or a card. Some letters would be posted, some I would hand to her and others were left somewhere for her to find. I know I missed a few days but looking at the little mountain of letters and cards I know did my best. But more importantly, it was a huge blessing to me and a great lesson, but more on that in a bit...I have to say it was a lot of fun. It was great to rekindle the letter writing skill (we used to write to each other constantly before we got married), especially in this age of connectivity and constant social media interactions when pens are rarely required. The whole experience was enjoyable and the highlight was intentionally setting aside a few minutes each day to write a letter or card. It meant that for a few precious minutes all I had to do was think about Paula and what I wanted to say to her.
Those were treasured moments!
We put this short slideshow together for our Renewal of Vows service at St. George's back in July.
The photos start back in 1985 when we started dating and go right through to this year.
We hope you enjoy it.
We seem to have been celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary for a while now, but then again, why not?! It's quite a milestone and one the world would like to have bet against. We often laugh about the fact that someone (who shall remain nameless) gave us six months when we announced our engagement. 24½ years later we hope they feel differently.In many respects we always believed we would hit this milestone and carry on way past it, but in other respects we're more than amazed that we've gone the distance so far.
To say that we'd have gotten this far without our faith would be foolish, all honour must go to our Lord for sustaining us!
So we've renewed our vows in St. George's, the church we were married in all those years ago. We've been to Paris for a week to celebrate on our own in style and now we're enjoying some special time at home with our boys, who think we're ancient because none of their friends' parents have been married for anywhere near as long. Oh the joys of being older parents!
We've never done this before but thought it would be good to share our September prayerletter on the blog. We hope you enjoy it...We can’t quite believe that we’re writing this having just celebrated our Silver Anniversary in Paris. We’re feeling incredibly blessed and privileged to have been able to celebrate in such spectacular fashion!
However, there is a story and testimony behind this which we want to share...
2016 has been a great year so far, and to be honest it just keeps on getting better and better!It was prophesied in The Gathering early in 2016 that this year would be a "year of blessings" and this has certainly been our experience and we're deeply grateful to God for the blessings poured out in our lives.
Today marks another major blessing for me as I've been married for exactly half my life today.
As we approach our Silver Wedding Anniversary next month I'm going to post some thoughts, reflections and anecdotes about marriage... Back in the day when I was still a practicing social worker for the local government in Blighty, it was deemed politically incorrect to refer to one's wife or husband as wife or husband. Rather, we were encouraged to be more inclusive and refer to our wife or husband as our partner.
Today we celebrate 22 years of married life and to celebrate, albeit a day or two earlier, we had a night away in Kalk Bay.It was great to take some time out and just chill, free from distractions and the busyness of life. It was also great to reflect on the adventure God has taken us on in those years.
To celebrate our twenty first wedding anniversary we had a very pleasant couple of nights away in the stunning seaside town of Kalk Bay on the Cape Peninsula, somewhere we've been wanting to explore for sometime.To finally get the chance to mooch around the place sans enfants was a real blessing and we'll definitely be back sometime soon.
Twentyone years ago our dear friend Richard pulled out all the stops on the organ and gave it some welly as he struck up Tocatta in C by Zipoli as the love of my life began walking down the aisle.I have been incredibly blessed by the fact that shortly after 1.30pm Paula said "I do" and I'll be forever grateful to her and to God for the amazing time we've had together ever since.
To marry someone special is great. To marry your soul-mate is fantastic. To spend a lifetime with the love of your life is simply awesome!
It seems unbelievable (to me at least) that we've been married for 20 years today. I think Paula deserves a medal for this!On the one hand I can't believe the time has flown so quickly, one has to wonder where it all went. On the other hand it's gone quite slowly as we've done some amazing things in that time, been to some incredible places and met some truly amazing people.
Having spent over heal of our marriage serving in mission has also been fantastic! We met through the Real Life Mission in Sevenoaks way back in 1985
Thankfully as we turn 20 today we're just starting out on another new adventure. Thank you Lord!
Still we've got a great evening lined up as we'll be out enjoying a good meal with good friends as we celebrate Jo With The Blue Car's 40th birthday. It should be a lot of fun!
Bring on the next 19!
A few previous posts about our anniversary.
We spent the first bit of the morning at Home Affairs having decided to use the morning well. Having wasted 30 mins trying to get a passport photo done we were then told that because we're not South African we couldn't get our ID documents here in Somerset West but would have to go to Paarl. One hour later we arrived in Paarl and amazingly after just another 40 minutes we'd been fingerprinted and processed and on our way back home.
We've had a great day albeit a very different one to how we've celebrated previous anniversaries - no sloping off for a quiet weekend sans enfants!
We went to church as usual (for a Sunday) and then onto Cape Town with the boys where we visited the aquarium and then had fish & chips for lunch at Ocean Basket - the boys choice. Joel loved playing with the bones from Mummy's sardines and then scoffed a lot of Daddy's prawns. Joel even enjoys shelling them himself. Eli amazed us with his choice of dips for his chips, he chose raw garlic!!
Previous anniversaries can be seen here: 16th, 14th & 13th we seem to have neglected our 15th.
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