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The Finnie family in Blighty, December 2021
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Dean and Paula pastor The Gathering together -
The Gathering -
Baptisms at The Gathering -
Preparing to serve at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen -
Soup Kitchen Welcome To 2022 lunch
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Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng -
Thankful Thursdays -
HOPE Home Based Care Team -
Gathering Ground -
Staying fit as a family -
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Having read my mate Hazel's Christmas 2013 blog post I was inspired and encouraged to confess to my own shortcomings in the Christmas cake department.Like Hazel I made two cakes, one came out very well (see left) and once it was iced etc. it went down a storm.
Sadly that's not the whole story though...
I could just follow the crowd and wish you a Happy Christmas, but I don't want to do that.Rather, I want to take a moment to think about what the Christmas story really is.
We all know that it's about God coming down and living amongst us, experiencing our pain, grief and joy, but there's so much more going on in the story.
The boys have spent the morning dressing the Christmas tree, which is the only thing Joel has any intention of dressing today! Eli got to top the tree off with the angel and all in all it's looking good.Our eldest niece is on her way to the airport as she begins her marathon flight with Turkish Airlines out to join us for Christmas and we're all excited to see her again.
Let the festivities begin!
We love this time of year because we get to distribute hampers etc on behalf of the church and others.This year we'll be distributing these sixteen hampers amongst our church families so we're just tidying them up and putting on a Christmas card from church so there's no doubt as to where they are from.
God is good!
They had so much fun doing it and on being unable to decide who should top the tree off with the angel they chose to do it together.
Nice one boys!
We had a fantastic family Christmas day despite it starting at some unearthly hour! Eventually Dean let Joel and Eli open their stockings at 4am in the hope that they would then go back to sleep. Job done by about 5am but not for long! At least they were excited.Christmas dinner was fantastic as ever thanks to Lisa's great cooking (courtesy of Delia) and it was great to actually have a family Christmas dinner on Christmas day for the first time in three years.
We both come from very different backgrounds in which Christmas was perceived very differently. Whilst Paula's family always made it a big occasion and had a sense of the real meaning behind the festival, Dean grew up expecting little of it as he knew it wasn't really worth getting excited about. He certainly had no real understanding of the festival and when it came to presents he never expected much as he knew he wouldn't get much.
This really changed for Dean after becoming a Christian and joining Paula's family. So for the last 20+ years Christmas has been a special and meaningful time in which we like to keep Jesus' birthday central to the whole occasion.
We decided to start our Christmas with what is becoming a bit of a traditional treat - a family picnic in Vergelegen forest under the camphor trees. Once again, we were treated to fantastic food and the boys really enjoyed hunting for their treasure using the maps provided! The weather was glorious - and we felt like we chilled for the first time this holiday.Had to rush home though to (a) check that Rose hadn't chewed or cried the house down and (b) track Santa on his travels via the official NORAD Santa Tracker!!
One of the problems of moving house so close to Christmas is that the usual preparations get somewhat pushed aside. Actually that could be a blessing! Anyway, after much nagging from two small boys we managed to put the Christmas tree up much to their delight. This year Joel did most of the decorating as Eli lacked the finesse to put the baubles and bits on the tree so threw a strop and wandered off into the garden. Bless him.Joel loves the tradition of decorating the tree and is beginning to understand the real meaning of Christmas. We had a bit of a chat about Santa and the real St. Nicholas and why he loved & served God.
This afternoon we had the privilege of joining Aunty Mona and her crew for the Firgrove kids Christmas Party. Each year she runs this party simply to bless the kids in the community. Wow what an afternoon. The turnout was fantastic and the kids had a brilliant time with the bouncy castle being the main attraction.
This year we were really pleased that the boys' school decided to put on a proper Nativity after avoiding it for a couple of years. Sadly they felt the need to send permission slips out to ensure that no-one was forced to take part that might not want to. We don't recall them doing that for Diwali.Joel was really pleased to be a king with Calvin & Jason whilst Eli was one of Santa's little helpers (not sure where that fits with the Nativity) and showed no sense of being intimidated by the stage or audience. If anything, he played up to the crowd!
The production was great and really well done and as to be expected the evening was not without a few priceless comedy moments. The best being the miraculous birth of a white Jesus to a black Mary, truly a miracle!
Today marked the eagerly awaited day for the Tiny Bubble creche in Chris Nissen. The boys' school have had a partnership with the créche for 3 years now, providing weekly sandwiches mainly, but also coming up trumps from time to time with school supplies, clothing and the odd cooker or two! Each year, we do a special party for all the children and "our children" have been generously buying presents for the individual kids and making and buying yummy party food for them!
Despite the seemingly huge number of presents we managed to slow things down a bit and told the boys a bit more about Jesus and what Christmas is really about. Joel seems to get it although he was really desperate to get on with opening presents.
In the absence of enjoying real sprouts we'll have to settle for this amusing story in the news: Farting gorillas force Brussels sprouts off zoo's Christmas menu.
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