The Finnie family in Blighty, December 2021
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
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
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.
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!
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.
These words from Jesus constitute my favourite Bible verse in John 16:33 (I've posted on this before here & here).
I like the fact that trouble is just part of the human condition. Jesus didn't say we were being tested or refined, nor is there a suggestion that god is a malevolent being that relishes in visiting bad upon mankind. Nope, trouble is simply a fact of life, full stop.
Sadly The Gathering have had to shelve plans for our annual Soup Kitchen Christmas Lunch this year. The main reason for doing so is simply one of logistics, as it would be beyond our resources to cater for and accommodate all of our regulars, which would lead to some frustration and disappointment, which we would rather avoid.
Next year when The Gathering is meeting in the main hall it will be a different ball game, but sadly we need to pass on it this year.
No, not our new home, but rather our church house...
Late in 2019 I felt God give me a word for The Gathering about putting our house in order, so in Jan 2020 we kicked off the New Year with a couple of sermons on this subject drawing from 2 Kings 4:1-7 and Haggai 1:1-15.
I'll not bore you with the details of those sermons, but suffice to say that although at that time we had registered as an NPO, we were far from compliant with the Dept of Social Development's requirements. Also, we were using songs in our worship without the proper licences from CCLI, as well as being a bit lax in a few other areas.
In our seemingly never ending quest to defeat the inconvenience of loadshedding we are always looking for ways to keep the power on so as not to interrupt our Homework Club and other church activities that are reliant upon a decent internet connection.
So it's great to have a mini UPS which can power the modem and router for our fibre connection meaning we can stay connected in spite of Eskom's dastardly tricks in trying to defeat us.
Today was an exciting day for The Gathering as we were blessed with 23 boxes of peanut pastes from our dear friends at My Father's House in Simon's Town.
This means we can once again be generous with the pastes which have become incredibly popular amongst our Soup Kitchen regulars.
Sadly only three of the kids got the message for this week, but word is out and so the next time loadshedding is scheduled for when a Homework Club is happening the kids know that we'll be ready and waiting to serve them.
So yesterday for the first time we were able to crack on with The Gathering's Homework Club through the scheduled two hour blackout thanks to our mini inverter which not only charged the tablets but then kept the router and wifi running for the 2½ hours for which the electricity was off.
This is a time of tremendous blessing for us, never mind for those that come to partake of the soup, though we know they are truly blessed too.
However, lately it's been quite sobering seeing the Soup Kitchen growing and seeing how the demographic of those coming for soup is expanding.
As ever our regulars were queueing well before we started serving, though the crowd was smaller than normal due to it being payments weeks for the various social grants such as pensions.
Despite the lower number we still served 140 litres of delicious homemade soup which was well received. It also meant we were able to be very generous in filling pots and giving seconds to those that wanted.
Early in the morning we had a desperate call from one of our church members in the community telling us that there had been a small explosion and it had wiped out the local electricity supply.
Sadly the recent growth of the Soup Kitchen means that those days are long gone and now as we use our biggest pans to make 140 litres of yummy soup, there's only enough for one cup each and a pot to take home.
This morning after picking up a trailer I had the joy of driving through to Simon's Town to My Father's House where my dear brother Shaddie loaded my car and trailer with loads of food for The Gathering.
There have been so many blessings to talk about recently, but I'll stick with my favourite which is seeing another young Christian being given the opportunity to serve and minister in the church.
This morning Kuda, a young Zimbabwean with a fantastic testimony of how God dramatically broke in to his life and saved him from drugs, opened our worship at The Gathering and exhorted us to put God and the needs of others above our own interests. Great stuff!
