It's amazing the difference a good haircut can make one feel about one's self.
- 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
Making Soup
I really enjoy every aspect of it, and love the fact that I can pretty much switch off and just let the process unfold.
Loadshedding Soup Kitchen
After the joy of our three Christmas Specials at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen, it's great to be back to the joy of our normal Soup Kitchen, replete with loadshedding.
Butternut is back in season locally, so it was a case of prepping and chopping 18kgs of them to make one hundred litres of delicious home-made soup.
Go Make Disciples
One of the many joys in leading church, is watching the ebb & flow of church life, and how some people are planted in for the long haul whilst others are with you for just a short time.
Today at The Gathering we had the privilege of sending Delena (& her husband John) off in prayer (we prayed our best prayers), and love to begin a new life in the Eastern Cape in a town called Buffels Vlei.
Festive Soup Kitchen 2
As ever, his photographs are truly stunning and he perfectly captured the heart and essence of The Gathering's Soup Kitchen.
Festive Soup Kitchen
We'll be serving 200 litres of home made Pea & Ham Soup. As well as serving our regulars with the usual packet of instant noodles, each recipient will receive a yummy home baked cookie, and the school age kids will each get a goodie bag containing a few school supplies together with a some sweets.
Worship Sunday
It must have been tough for the Hebrews to carry on in their worship with no sign of life from God.
Then the Angel Gabriel spoke to Mary and the silence was broken.
Suddenly, for those who were listening, life was full and rich with the blessings of God, and where religion may have been dry and dusty it was swept through with the awesome grace of the living God.
How Many Noodles?
It's a great blessing to see so much food stacked up in the church office/kitchen, especially knowing that Paula negotiated such a great deal with the shopkeeper that we got +/-1700 individual packets of noodles for the princely sum of R1.60 each (7p each in Blighty). In the local shops a cheap packet of noodles would normally cost around R5 each (22p).
What a blessing. Thank you LORD!
Preparing To Serve
This picture warms my heart as it captures the very heart and DNA of The Gathering.
We don't run our Soup Kitchen as an evangelistic outreach, and we put no conditions on who can or cannot receive soup, we serve all comers.
The reason for this is that we use our weekly Soup Kitchen as a way of thanking God for all He's done for us and as such we want to share those blessings with others.
The Gospel
I wasn't supposed to be preaching at The Gathering this morning, but events in the week meant that it was over to me, and as ever it was a joy and a privilege to share the Word.
During the week I had briefly contemplated giving our Gathering over to an impromptu Testimony Sunday, but decided against this because I knew we would be low on numbers this morning, and partly because I knew I was being lazy in not preparing a word.
Well before I even got up to preach, God had interrupted our Gathering spectacularly and it turned in to an impromptu Testimony Sunday with testimony after testimony being shared.
Happy Place
Today I'm making two hundred litres of delicious creamy vegetable soup, which hopefully will be a real blessing to those that come for soup.
Royally Blessed
So it was pure joy and a real privilege to allow two of our members to share the Word as part of our Seven Minute Challenge.
What made it even better was the fact that Jubilant had asked a few weeks ago if she could also lead The Gathering's worship on this Sunday.
Just wow!
Testimony Sunday
Testimony Sunday at The Gathering is always a joy and a blessing, and this morning was no different!
The stream of testimonies of God's goodness just kept flowing. What was clear is that most had been having a tough year, but each acknowledged that it was only by God's awesome grace that they had got to where they were and were blessed because of His loving kindness.
Loadshedding Soup Kitchen
On Thursday it was the turn of The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen to once again enjoy the inconvenience of loadshedding.
Unexpected Blessings
This is what church is all about! There was such a buzz at The Gathering yesterday as we prepared soup, hosted our Homework Club and launched our first go at offering free haircuts to any men/boys who wanted. Add in to this the fact that we also took food to the two Macassar Soup Kitchen's The Gathering supports and it really was an amazing day of blessings!
Barber Outreach
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.
Tablets For Homework Club
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
Sometimes it's hard to fully grasp the reality of this scripture, especially in the midst of difficult and trying circumstances.
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!
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