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
We are so thankful for life at The Gathering at present.
As a church we've been praying for the spiritual growth of our members for a long time and we've seen these prayers answered spectacularly. Just this morning Errol shared a word rich in scripture, passion and practical application which greatly encouraged the membership. Seeing someone raised up in to leadership and ministry and then flying in these areas is a joy to watch.
So, here's the question: Why do you persist with church?
It was gutting to get a phone call late in the afternoon yesterday informing us that the home of some of our Soup Kitchen regulars had been on fire, with the household losing everything they had.
But it was also a blessing as the community knows that in such circumstances they can turn to the church for some genuine relief and assistance.
Our much anticipated, prayed for and planned ''Welcome to 2022" Soup Kitchen lunch was a roaring success on Sunday, and we give God all the glory for this!
As we watched the advance weather reports in disbelief, stating that Sunday was going to be the hottest day on record, we gathered people to ask God to bring the temperature down, and to specifically cover the sun with cloud from 12-3 pm, or the event would simply be unbearable for us all.
Printing is done, stickers are ready, goody bags have been lovingly decorated by hand and are ready to be stuffed to the top with some delicious sweets . The food is prepped and ready, so now there are just a few last minute jobs to be done as we pull it all together in the morning ready for service at 1pm.
It's a joy to be in the latter stages of getting things together for The Gathering's fourth annual Soup Kitchen Christmas Lunch, though this year it's a Welcome to 2022 Lunch.
The goody bags are shaping up very nicely and we hope they will be a real blessing to each person we serve at the lunch on Sunday 23rd.
Thanks to some incredibly generous donations we're able to go even further this year in blessing our Soup Kitchen regulars, and that is really exciting us even before the lunch itself!
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.
Since we've taken the Soup Kitchen up to a minimum of 100 litres each week our consumption of the basics has rocketed meaning that keeping on top of it all and ensuring we have enough to prepare and serve the soup each Thursday has become a bit of a mission in itself.
Given how wet and cold it was, it was even more of a blessing knowing the The Gathering's Soup Kitchen had more than enough to make sure that no one went hungry, and everyone could have as much as they needed.
The 140 litres certainly went a long way and it was one of the few Soup Kitchen's in recent times in which we've not had to turn anyone away because the soup was finished.
Our Soup Kitchen is always a chilled and laid back affair, but everyone seemed to know there was more soup than usual and so our regulars were more than happy to take their time over being served, even if it meant standing out in the wet and cold for a bit longer than usual.
Last night at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen I think we might just have found a way to communicate the levels of hunger...
For some time now it has been a dream of mine to increase The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen to 100 litres so that we can be even more generous with our soup than we currently are. Most weeks we have been serving 70lts and sometimes just 50lts depending on how close we are to the social grants having been paid.
Over the last few weeks we've just been using our 70lt pot and a couple of times we've had to turn folk away because we had run out, and that never feels good.
So it was great to be able to be our usual generous selves and then some, as we had plenty to go around tonight and by the time the queue had fizzled out we had just a single one litre pot and a cup left.
One of the unintended consequences of the pandemic and lockdown is our involvement with other local Soup Kitchens.
We never intended to get involved with any others as we were quite happy focusing on The Gathering's own outreach.
However it has been a joy and a privilege to be able to serve and build a relationship with two local Soup Kitchens being run by two amazing ladies in Macassar.
Three years ago today I had the privilege and honour of attending Linda's graduation ceremony. It truly was an honour and a privilege to be invited knowing just how hard she worked for this and how hard life was for the seven years in which she sacrificed so much to pursue the dream God had given her.
Next month I will have the absolute pleasure, privilege, honour and joy of walking Linda down the aisle as she marries Mongezi (a great guy!) and begins a whole new chapter in her journey of faith.
I truly am blessed beyond measure!
That was a morning well spent as I picked up a trailer early before going to get Errol so we could go through to some friends in Gordon's Bay to collect some old furniture and household bits that they no longer need.
Amongst everything, there was a really nice DVD player which I just had to drop off at Michael's in Chris Nissen on the way back to Firgrove. Michael has been asking for a DVD player for ages so it was great to be able to bless him.
This is a little mentioned part of The Gathering's ministry to the neediest women & girls in our community.
For a few years now we have regularly been collecting sanitary pads and other sanitary products to give to the neediest and most vulnerable women in the community.
Initially this was aimed at the older girls attending our Homework Club because so many teenage girls simply miss school when they're menstruating because they have little or no access to the necessary products to help.
Really, this should be W is for worship, but I only thought of that after the event, so here we are with Y for YouTube.
At The Gathering we're not blessed with any musicians that can lead us in our worship, so we use worship videos downloaded from YouTube, and then we sing along to them on Sundays and any other event where we would like a time of worship.
I know it's Friday today, but sadly April hasn't been too cooperative with its alignment of days and letters.
Ever since we planted The Gathering we have encouraged the church to join in with our Thankful Thursdays in which we focus on giving thanks for all that God has done and is doing in our lives.
