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
I always get ridiculously overexcited by our annual delivery of firewood, especially when it arrives in the middle of our hottest month and it seems impossible to think that we'll actually need the heating.
I think one of the things I like best about the wood delivery is that the garage smells heavenly for a few weeks after as the wood continues to season, though this year's lot is already incredibly dry.
We've been thoroughly blessed with an amazing family Christmas (our first in 11 years) and New Year and this morning, after worshiping with the community of St George's in Weald we interred Paula's Dad's ashes in the graveyard.
This was a special time with family and was great to share with Paula's remaining Uncles & Aunts on her Dad's side. We were also thrilled to learn that his ashes were to be interred in the same place as her Mum's ashes. This truly blessed the family.
So, Christmas is done and we're entering an interesting year...
Eli enters his Matric year and is very keen to enlist in the British Army as soon as he can once his exams are over. Joel has applied for an internship and is hoping and praying he's successful. Please stand with him & us in praying for this.
This scripture is the guiding principle of The Gathering's Thankful Thursdays, and sometimes it's easy to forget about it, so it was good to be reminded of it so starkly yesterday, a day of phenomenal blessings and heartbreak.
The blessings had begun on Wednesday when I drove over to My Father's House in Simon's Town to collect a very generous food donation from them.
We are so happy that Joel is being discipled by some quality folk at The Bay Christian Family Church here in Somerset West, and it truly warmed our hearts that he chose to get baptized with them today. It's been a joy to watch him plug in to a local church and explore his faith on his own with a church he feels safe in.
I love coming through in the morning to make a pot of tea only to discover that one, or both of my boys have been playing their instruments late in to the night and maybe even had a jamming session together.
This pic is of Joel's personal pride & joy; his PRS, and what really blesses and excites me about knowing he's once again picking up his guitar to play is that his desire to play is born out of his time spent at church and with his youth group. We just know that in that environment he is being constantly encouraged and it warms one's heart.
Firstly, thank you for all your prayers and kind wishes, they're much appreciated!
So there's good news and there's bad news...
The first bit of good news is that the Muni ride (Mountain Unicycling) on Saturday was a lot of fun with a great crowd of people who were also a massive help in sorting me out once I'd broken my arm.
We covered 7710.6 kilometres (almost 4820 miles) in twenty days and drove through eight of South Africa's nine provinces. We camped for 10 nights and stayed in accommodation for 9 nights. We wild-camped twice, both in the Eastern Cape where it was very cold. Our coldest night was -4C in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, our warmest night was 14C in the Kruger National Park.
I could have painted some black stripes on my car to make it look like a Zebra, but actually, this post is not about Zebras at all.
Truth be told I couldn't think of anything better and it seemed like a good way to say a bit about my upcoming adventure with my oldest son...
Joel turned 18 in March and as part of the celebrations of this event, we (he & I) will be going off on a three week off-road wild camping trip right around South Africa.
Knowledge is power goes the adage, and the whole point of having an MRI was to gain the knowledge needed to make informed choices for treatment and prayer.
Today we know definitively what is wrong with my back, and now we can make informed decisions about where to go from here.
Firstly though, the good news is that I have no cancers or other unwanted tumors etc lurking in my abdomen, my spine is in good condition with good bone density and good alignment all around. All my internal organs appear sound with nothing untoward going on with any of them, so I'm very happy with that news!
I was on my second trip collecting the peanut paste sachets and pootling along with a loaded trailer at 75kph (a little under 50mph) when the trailer started snaking. I think it was a combination of the wind, the weight, and a poorly serviced trailer that caused the snaking.
Yesterday afternoon I was left feeling very deflated after once again running in to an unhelpful & unyielding branch of South African bureaucracy.
This morning I was blessed by the joy of borrowing a friends trailer and driving out to Muizenberg to collect 47 boxes of the peanut paste sachets that are so popular amongst our Soup Kitchen regulars.
I'm excited today because I've begun to collect some detailed road maps of South Africa in preparation for Joel's 18th birthday road trip.
Joel & I are planning a 4X4 road trip around the whole of SA for his birthday so the planning can begin in earnest now.
Sadly, due to the pandemic and college dates for Joel we're having to delay the trip from March to his June/July break, but the advantage of that is that we'll have no major time constraints and can make it a bit of a more leisurely trip.
We can't wait!
It's a joy to be keeping fit and exercising together as a family and it's a joy to be a part of the CEY family, a gym with a difference.
This is a place where all are made to feel welcome, a place where we all remember where we came from and how poor we were when we started. There are no elitist attitudes and no space for the posers, and it's all the better for it.
Paula & Eli love the Crossfit whilst Dean & Joel are addicted to the Boxing and our bodies are loving the health benefits. It's win win in every way possible.
However, it is what it is and it was a joy to be able to gather freely, to worship without a mask and to share prayers and words of encouragement.
It was also a blessing to welcome a couple of new folk to join us online.
The Gathering will only grow from here.
Thank you LORD!
What better way can there be to start Christmas Eve than to go boxing with your son?
We had such a great session with Coach Anathi and were blessed to be the only two that rocked up for the session.
Getting Joel in to boxing has been so rewarding as we've watched his self confidence rocket. The way he conducts himself and carries himself is quite impressive for a young man and we're convinced it's the fruit of persistent prayer and the boxing.
Hopefully I can encourage him to have a proper fight in the ring later next year, just don't tell his mum...
The end of the year always seems to sneak up on us as life becomes hectic with exams for the boys and church life ramping up a gear ready for our end of year events. This year also had the added stress of our ongoing "will we/won't we" make it to Blighty for Christmas with family, though sadly that is now definitely off.
Joel's final Matric exams seem to be going well and we were thrilled when he described History Paper 1 as "a gift", hopefully this will have encouraged him to keep going.
School seemed to peter out for Eli, who now has an end of term farewell to look forward to on MS Teams. He's thrilled... not.
I'll try and post a bit more in the next day or two, but for now I'll leave you with this pic from my easiest early morning 10k Uni ride yet.
It has been great to get back to some level of normality recently, though having said that, life still remains vastly different to how it was pre-Covid.
However there is a degree of familiarity reappearing and to be honest it is very welcome.
Life was very tough under Lockdown. Levels 5 to 3 were quite unpleasant as we endured one of the toughest lockdowns in the world.
