Homework Club

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!

Desperate For Power

Our power situation doesn't improve. 

We had loadshedding until 4am this morning followed by scheduled maintenance from 6am until 4pm which stretched out 'til 5.30pm. The only bright spot in this was that our scheduled loadshedding from 6pm was skipped this evening.

Not Defeated

It was great to see The Gathering's Homework Club continue through loadshedding on Thursday for the first time ever, and it's a blessing knowing that we no longer have to turn the kids away just because the electricity is off.

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.

Cracking On

With loadshedding now in its 16th year and showing no signs of going anywhere anytime soon, it was time to make a plan to ensure life can go on (see Take That Loadshedding!).

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.

Take That Loadshedding!

Loadshedding celebrates its 15th birthday this October.

Yes, this country has been rolling out planned energy blackouts for fifteen years because Eskom the state owned utility is too incompetent and the ruling ANC are too corrupt to get their act together and actually resolve the issues. The main issue being the $24bn+ that have been stolen by those in power!

In God's Power We Trust

Yesterday's Women's Day Outreach at The Gathering was spectacular and we're thankful to God for making it the day that it was. One salvation, a healing and a deliverance made it an awesome time in God's presence, and we're also thankful for His amazing answer to our prayer for electricity for the event.

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. 

Loadshedding

Well that was some welcome home!

During my week in Blighty our putative electricity supplier decided to ramp up loadshedding from Stage 4 to stage 6.

What this means is that six areas in the Cape Town municipality are off at the same time but rather than being off for the usual two hours we get the joy of being off for four hours at a time. Deep joy!

Third Greatest City

Cape Town was recently heralded as the 3rd greatest city on Earth by The UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. 

In fact they went even further and declared that Cape Town is "the greatest city in the world to visit right now".  High praise indeed!

However, Cape Town wasn't ranked as the #1 city due to its appalling murder rate, which was one of the criteria taken in to consideration for each city considered.

Loadshedding And Then Some

South Africa has this ridiculous system called loadshedding in which the state monopoly power provider switches the electricity off at various points around the country for 2 hours at a time. 

Somehow they think it's all made more acceptable and manageable by having an actual schedule for this nonsense, but this schedule is adaptive depending on which particular stage of loadshedding we happen to be enjoying.

I Like To ride My Bicycle

After the theft of Joel's bicycle we had a further theft in which my bike was nicked along with our gas bottle. Sadly we only noticed a little while after the event when we wanted to boil the kettle during loadshedding.

Thanks to a rather lovely blessing we were able to replace Joel's bike a while ago, but we'd been waiting to replace mine, mainly due to cost.

Farewell Dad

Today we said farewell to Dad/Brian/Grandad and it was hard to do so from such a long way away, but that's one of the harsh realities of these strange times.

Rev Mandy from St. George's did a great job in leading the service at the crematorium and spoke so well about him and his life with genuine grace & wisdom. Thank you Mandy!

We had to decamp over to The Gathering's home in order to live stream the service given that loadshedding was due to begin at 12pm at home and it was lovely to be joined by our dear friend Annatjie.

We did have the privilege of recording a video tribute by Paula and a Bible reading by Dean, so though we were over 6000 miles away we were there in spirit as well as the live stream.

Soup Kitchen Christmas Lunch

Wow, what a day that was!

For me it was the most exciting day of the year and a tremendous privilege to be a part of.

It was amazing to see how the seed of a crazy idea planted just over a year ago came to bear such incredible fruit.

Load Shedding

I can't quite believe that I've never blogged about this farce issue before, especially as it's such a regular occurrence due to Eskom's incompetence mismanagement corruption breakdown in supply infrastructure and its inability to manage its affairs.