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
Today was doubly exciting because not only is it a Thursday and we get to serve our regulars at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen,but today our Matha@Home Homework Club restarted after an almost two year furlough thanks to the pandemic.
It just felt so right to have the Homework Club operating again and the kids were really enjoying themselves and the attention they were receiving from Delena our beloved facilitator.
The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen was crazily busy last night as the 100 litres of homemade Cream of Chicken Soup gone in 25 minutes!
In fact, the soup went so quickly that no one was able to have seconds and the last six people only received a cup of soup and a packet of noodles because we couldn't fill any more pots. This was quite heartbreaking, and so next week we will be dusting off our two 70lt pans to make 140 litres of soup.
These are the main ingredients but I'll also be adding a lot of salt, pepper, garlic, herbs & spices and some soup powder just to top off the flavour.
This is an exciting moment as we prepare to relaunch The Gathering's Maths@Home Homework Club after an almost two year break thanks to Covid.
The first eight children have been accepted and the letters are about to go out to their parents/carers to inform them that they can begin on Tuesday next week.
It has been said that if you can do what you enjoy for a living then it never feels like work.
Well that is definitely true for me and never truer than on a day like yesterday when I had the privilege and joy of delivering a load of food to the two Macassar Soup Kitchens which The Gathering supports.
It is always a joy to welcome a guest speaker but an absolute pleasure to welcome someone like Rose who is so anointed in her prophetic gift of ministering God's word to his children.
Today has been an immense blessing as some of The Gathering were able to go through to Simon's Town and serve at My Father's House and then join them for church at the beach ministering to some of the local homeless community that My Father's House are in relationship with through their Community Kitchen and Resource Centre.
Church at the beach was an exciting gathering and it felt like church that Jesus would have wanted to be a part of.
A lot of work has gone in to this, not least by Paula who put in several long hours to get our accounts up to date and ready for The Gathering's accountants to once again sign off on the church's financial accounts for 2021 & 2022.
This also means that we've been able to submit the relevant documents to the Dept of Social Development to ensure The Gathering's ongoing compliance with the terms of our registration as an NPO.
I'll just say it up top... this was my best A to Z Challenge yet and it was for one simple reason; I had a plan for the whole series of posts which took so much pressure off.
The other thing that made this a lot more fun than previous years was that I had all my posts scheduled to post well ahead of time. In fact the closest I ever got to being close to the actual posting date was with Y & Z both of which were completed just two days before posting.
Now I'm not renowned for being the most organized person on the planet but having a clear plan & schedule really helped me and I would heartily recommend it to anyone else participating in the A2Z Challenge.
At The Gathering we had to close our Homework Club down back in March 2020 as the initial lockdown began, and due to a number of issues we have only just been in a position in which we could set about reopening it whilst also doing our best to ensure that the children attending are as safe as possible.
At The Gathering we happily serve all comers regardless of their size, stature or status, we're not swayed by whether folk walked, just got out of a car or maybe got a ride to get there.
We serve everyone with the same level of grace & dignity and are as generous as we can be until the soup runs out.
I've now placed steel plates along the length of the door and made sure they're as tight to the floor as possible.
On the corners I've bent two separate plates to fit with a flap sticking out to prevent any attempts at limbo by the mice.
I think I can say with confidence that I've won the battle here, and if they do chew through they probably deserve to be there.
At The Gathering we've been praying for numerical growth for so long that now that it's happening it seems a bit surreal, but we're incredibly in awe of our faithful prayer answering God.
As Mongezi opened our gathering we were already pretty much full, but as our gathering progressed we had to get more and more chairs out from the back so that everyone had somewhere to sit.
The mice come in through the shop next door's storeroom at the back, but they don't realise there's a problem because they have a cat which keeps the mice pretty invisible on their side.
Quite why the mice bother coming through to our premises, and what it is they find so exciting is a mystery as all our Soup Kitchen foodstuffs are in plastic tubs as is pretty much everything else, so the pickings for them are quite slim.
Despite this however, things are getting out of hand for both ourselves and for the launderette next door.
The queue was one of the biggest we've ever seen and folk were patiently waiting from before 5pm knowing that we don't begin serving until 6pm.
As ever the vibe was very relaxed and despite waiting for quite a long time, everyone was very grateful for what they received.
I made 100 litres of Cream of Beef & Tomato soup for last night and though I say it myself it was rather good, and it certainly went down well with everyone because it was all gone in twenty minutes!
The Gathering was on fire this morning as we celebrated Christ's resurrection from the grave, a cold & hard historical fact.
The worship was awesome and it was a joy to share a word laid on my heart a few weeks ago about the three times Jesus spoke to his Father from the cross, as well as giving a clear gospel presentation for those that don't know Jesus yet.
The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen remains the highlight of my week.
Whilst it's always a calm and laid back affair in which the church is able to be incredibly generous to those that come for food, it's different every week and you can never fully be sure of what you might see or hear during the course of it.
Each week we get a never ending stream of tales and stories about why we should give someone more of this and someone else more of that...
I always think one of the highlights of church is being linked with other churches and outreach projects, supporting and encouraging one another to do our best as we serve the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities.
So at The Gathering it has been a real joy to support two Soup Kitchens in Macassar with monthly food contributions.
Whilst the Soup Kitchen itself passed off peacefully as usual, thank you LORD! It was chaotic outside with one of the local youngsters getting herself run over causing the driver to crash in to a parked car.
Amazingly the ambulance actually turned up (they rarely do in these communities!) followed by a fire engine (why?!?) and eventually a traffic cop showed up too.
