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.JPG)
HOPE Home Based Care Team
Gathering Ground
Staying fit as a family
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
On Thursday evening life eased up again here as President Ramaphosa opened all international borders allowing for tourism to resume. This will be a major injection for the local economy and renews our hopes of being able to travel to Blighty over the Christmas period. Sadly we're wholly dependent on the British side of things, and given how poorly managed the pandemic has been there, our hopes remain just that.
It has been great to get back to some level of normality recently, though having said that, life still remains vastly different to how it was pre-Covid.
However there is a degree of familiarity reappearing and to be honest it is very welcome.
Life was very tough under Lockdown. Levels 5 to 3 were quite unpleasant as we endured one of the toughest lockdowns in the world.
We had the joy and pleasure of attending Joel's High School Valedictory this morning and were pleasantly surprised by the awards he picked up, which included a Silver Merit for Mathematics, though the real shock of the morning was his commendation for his Afrikaans oral. Anyone who's walked the road with us over the last few years knows that this has been a battle royale for Joel, so we're super proud of him for that!
It was a strange event given the restrictions due to Covid, but False Bay High did a great job of honouring the Matric Class of 2020.
I once said that The Forsaken by Tim Tzouliadis was the most frightening book I have ever read. Well now it must be relegated to the second most frightening book I have ever read.
Midnight In Chernobyl is an extraordinarily detailed and graphic telling of the catastrophic events at Chernobyl nuclear power plant, looking in detail at the events leading up to the meltdown and the years of fallout (no pun intended) that followed.
If you want to be scared senseless this Halloween, read one of these!
The Gathering's Soup Kitchen returned to some kind of normality last night as we were finally able to allow folk in to enjoy a cup of soup whilst taking a load off. A total of eight chose to sit inside and it was clear that they were enjoying being able to be back inside just as much as we were all happy to have them back in again.
I was manning the door with the sanitiser and thermometer and only allowed those inside who were also wearing a mask as we are operating a strict policy of "no mask, no entry" to comply with the health & safety protocols put in place by govt.
We've been planning to get The Gathering open again in Firgrove for a while now and just before SA went in to Lockdown Level 1 we said in faith the we would reopen on Sunday 4 October.
So it was pure joy for that faith to become reality as we Gathered again after almost seven months of being unable to.
Thank you LORD!
After several years of persistent and sometimes frightening drought, Cape Town's dams sit at a collective 100.1% full with Theewaterskloof our biggest and most important dam sitting at 100.5% full. Given that it was down to just under 20% just over a year ago that is an amazing turnaround and a huge answer to prayer.
This winter has been the wettest and coldest in all our years here and there's more rain predicted which is fantastic.
Hopefully our drought can finally be banished to the dustbin of history.
This may just be my weird sense of humour, so you may want to scroll on by for this one...
I'm always on the look out for a sign that can be misinterpreted or has a spelling mistake in it, or something that's just a bit odd, so I was thrilled to come across this error notice on the screen of the ATM in a local shop.
Whilst we were waiting to be served Joel and I happily wasted a fun few minutes discussing what might be wrong with the ATM's throat and indeed where its throat might actually be. In the end we concluded this one was lost in translation.
I've never previously been fit enough or strong enough to go far on it before, but thanks to all the boxing training riding 5kilometres on my Muni was far easier and more enjoyable than it's ever been
On the strength of this I'm looking forward to speeding up a bit and going further on future rides.
So it was good to be able to respond as a church and bless the family with another food hamper as well as some good quality clothes and some toys for their children which were donated by local Christian friends.
You have to love it when Christians stand together as the church and bless those in need.
