The Finnie family in Blighty, December 2021
Dean and Paula pastor The Gathering together
Baptisms at The Gathering
The Gathering's Soup Kitchen in action during the coronavirus
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
Yes, we actually have a corner of the house dedicated to just keeping various items charged and running for when the power goes off.
So far in 2023 we haven't had a single day without loadshedding, and recently we seem to have graduated from mostly being in Stages 1 & 2 to mostly being in Stages 5 & 6 which often means we get to enjoy four hours of uninterrupted blackouts at a time.
Just two weeks after his first attempt, and at a different testing station, Joel passed his driving test and can be unleashed on the world.
This is another step in our change of lifestyle as not only do we no longer need to do any school runs, but now Joel can sort himself out for lifts to and from work, church etc.
Thank you LORD!
This move should lead us into a positive change in lifestyle which is exciting us. We'll be just a five minute walk from the beach which will make a big difference to our mental well being, and having a sun room that spills out into the north facing garden is also a big change for us. We'll also be a bit closer to church and won't have to drive through the town centre to get there!
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.
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!
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!
Today is Youth Day, a public holiday here in South Africa in which we remember the senseless slaughter of over 100 children and the thousand plus who were injured in Soweto by the apartheid regime as the kids protested against the then new law forcing them to be taught in Afrikaans rather than their own indigenous languages.
Sadly this day is barely acknowledged in the Western world and the first time we heard of it was in 1998 when we were in Tanzania, where today is celebrated as the International Day Of The African Child. Personally I prefer this more internationally minded celebration of the day, it feels more positive and more outward looking.
After an exciting ten days back in Blighty with family to celebrate our middle niece's wedding, Paula arrived home this morning, much to the relief of all the trousers.
The junior trousers survived and were fed, watered and made it to their various commitments on time as well as getting home again safe and sound, so I'll call that a win.
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.
Like many other folk I'm appalled by the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and feel powerless to do anything, so I'm proud of my favourite band for joining with Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox to raise funds for Ukraine.
The new track can be purchased here.
Cris is the real deal! Also known as The Warrior of Faith, he is a professional boxer and belt holder, he is currently holder of the World Boxing Federation (WBF) Welterweight International Champion. He also held the African Boxing Union Title (ABU) Champion which he successfully defended twice. Cris now coaches boxing for the love of the sport.
A bit of background: Cris is Angolan but lives in South Africa, he's part of the Angolan diaspora caused by the civil war in the country which eventually ended in 2002. He arrived in SA as a youngster and now resides here permanently. Cris started boxing in Luanda aged 15 as a distraction from the gangs he was involved with and his passion was sealed.
Initially there was broad support for the lockdown despite the fact that before it started there had been no local Covid related deaths and infection rates were minimal.
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.
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.
Last night at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen I think we might just have found a way to communicate the levels of hunger...
