Life got a little hectic as we knew certain items would be banned from sale for the duration, and so many people went crazy with hoarding, and it wasn't just loo rolls!
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The Finnie family in Blighty, December 2021
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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
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Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng -
Thankful Thursdays -
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HOPE Home Based Care Team -
Gathering Ground -
Staying fit as a family -
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
Alongside doing the bulk of the donkey work in terms of collecting donations, I also get to do the fun bit of passing them on to those that are in need of them.
Over the last few weeks The Gathering has been blessed with just over 6 pallets of peanut sachets, with each pallet holding 72 boxes and each box containing 150 sachets. In total we've received about 450 boxes and as of today we have so far given 300 boxes away.
Further to my post a couple of days ago on Rejects Become Blessings, I've uncovered a little bit more of the story and I find it quite perplexing.
As I said in that post, some of the boxes we received were indeed rejected due to the odd leaky sachet, but the bulk of the boxes we received on Friday have been rejected for far stranger reasons.
Yesterday afternoon I was left feeling very deflated after once again running in to an unhelpful & unyielding branch of South African bureaucracy.
This morning I was blessed by the joy of borrowing a friends trailer and driving out to Muizenberg to collect 47 boxes of the peanut paste sachets that are so popular amongst our Soup Kitchen regulars.
It was pure joy and a real privilege to spend a few hours with my mate Shaddie this morning serving My Father's House as they prepare the food for their daily feeding programme providing for the most vulnerable members of the Simon's Town community and beyond.
I love what My Father's House are doing and their vision and motivation behind it all, so it's probably a good thing that we don't live any closer because I would invest more of my time in to their vision and work to the detriment of my main focus.
It's been a while since we were able to deliver any food parcels, so it was a joy to be able to package up just enough food today to be able to bless our HOPE Home Based Care ladies in Chris Nissen with a decent hamper each.
Despite the government recently easing our lockdown restrictions, life is still very tough for the poorest, so it was a privilege to be able to put a smile on the HOPE ladies faces as they received their hampers.
One of the joys of what we do is being able to collect donations, sort them and then send them out again to the right people/places to ensure they have the maximum impact.
So recently it was great to be in touch with a local who had several boxes of brand new flip-flops left over from a recently closed business enterprise. They were keen that the flip-flops were not sold but rather would go to people who need them and would appreciate them, which is where The Gathering comes in. Sadly some of the boxes were water damaged so we've had to bin the worst of the damaged flip-flops, but we were able to rescue seven boxes of 24 pairs to be given away. What a blessing!
Over the last few weeks we've seen some steady growth in the numbers coming for The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen as well as seeing some old regulars that were holed up in other places reemerging. And what we know from all of this is that the need for food is greater than ever!
So last night for the first time since our 21 day lockdown began almost a year ago, we used the 70lt pot, and we served over 150 cups and gave away thirty 1lt pots for folk to take home.
It's exciting to be serving so many, but it's heartbreaking that the need is so prevalent!
Normally this one in the month would be our quietest given that pensions and disability grants have just been paid, but such is the need in the current climate that we were far busier than we had expected.
What this confirms to us is what we already know; the need is very real and those that come for soup are genuinely grateful for the reliability of the Soup Kitchen.
South Africa's lockdown was eased a little on Monday which means life once again has some semblance of normality about it, whatever that is, and we could feel it in the community as things felt a little lighter than they have of late.
I'm excited today because I've begun to collect some detailed road maps of South Africa in preparation for Joel's 18th birthday road trip.
Joel & I are planning a 4X4 road trip around the whole of SA for his birthday so the planning can begin in earnest now.
Sadly, due to the pandemic and college dates for Joel we're having to delay the trip from March to his June/July break, but the advantage of that is that we'll have no major time constraints and can make it a bit of a more leisurely trip.
We can't wait!
It's a joy to be keeping fit and exercising together as a family and it's a joy to be a part of the CEY family, a gym with a difference.
This is a place where all are made to feel welcome, a place where we all remember where we came from and how poor we were when we started. There are no elitist attitudes and no space for the posers, and it's all the better for it.
Paula & Eli love the Crossfit whilst Dean & Joel are addicted to the Boxing and our bodies are loving the health benefits. It's win win in every way possible.
However, it is what it is and it was a joy to be able to gather freely, to worship without a mask and to share prayers and words of encouragement.
It was also a blessing to welcome a couple of new folk to join us online.
The Gathering will only grow from here.
Thank you LORD!
It's with a heavy heart that after the Christmas/summer break we have to reopen The Gathering online again.
Church life was really picking up towards the end of the year and we were seeing exciting stuff happening, but sadly with the new Covid variant being more virulent than before, we (along with every other church in SA) have had to close our doors on Sundays.
So, just as we did last time, The Gathering will be going back on to WhatsApp so that we can keep our gatherings in real time and open to contributions from members.
In the meantime we must pray that the virus is finally brought in to check so we can get back on with life.
I have three unicycles that I mix between, a 20", a 29" and a 36", each of which are quite different to each other with different purposes.
Eli also has his own 20" unicycle and I keep two other 20" unis in the garage for when folk fancy having a go at learning to ride.
The railing along the wall is part of the kit for teaching others to ride.
What a year it was! 2020 started with a bang as The Gathering set about getting its house in order in terms of being fully compliant with the terms of our Non Profit Organization registration, registering with SARS for tax compliancy, obtaining the relevant CCLI licenses to enable us to use music in church legally and a few other bits. The progress we made was quite amazing and we have now submitted three years worth of verified accounts and reports to the Dept of Social Development as part of our NPO compliance. We're still waiting on SARS, but given how slowly the wheels of bureaucracy turn here, Covid or not we'd probably still be waiting.
What better way can there be to start Christmas Eve than to go boxing with your son?
We had such a great session with Coach Anathi and were blessed to be the only two that rocked up for the session.
Getting Joel in to boxing has been so rewarding as we've watched his self confidence rocket. The way he conducts himself and carries himself is quite impressive for a young man and we're convinced it's the fruit of persistent prayer and the boxing.
Hopefully I can encourage him to have a proper fight in the ring later next year, just don't tell his mum...
As the coronavirus appears to be surging again both here and around much of the world, it's only sensible that as a church we do all we can to ensure that we minimize any risk of spreading the virus, so we're doing all we can to ensure that anyone entering the building wears a mask correctly, sanitizes their hands and maintains a social distance where possible. Thus far it seems to be working.
It's been a huge blessing being able to Gather again physically in the second half of the year, there's little more uplifting in life than corporate worship, even if one has to do it from behind a mask.
Despite the horror show 2020 turned out to be, it has been a year of incredible blessings for The Gathering and one we'll remember for years to come for all the right reasons.
So here are the official photos of The Gathering's annual Soup Kitchen Xmas Lunch. You can see the full album here.
We had such an amazing day together with church and our volunteers and the lunch itself was an amazing time of serving and blessing our many friends who come to our weekly Soup Kitchen every Thursday.
Thank you to all our volunteers and contributors, you made the day very special indeed!
What a special time we had serving many of our Soup Kitchen regulars at The Gathering's annual Christmas Lunch.
Our volunteers were amazing and once again just got stuck in with our church family in making sure everything was well prepared and served.
We can't thank enough those who contributed towards the day in time, resources and money.
We're now very excited for The Gathering's Soup Kitchen Xmas Lunch tomorrow, but we have to be mindful of the coronavirus and the potential impact of it and the event itself.
To that end we are taking it very seriously with plenty of notices going up about wearing masks and social distancing. We are also providing each guest with a mask and all volunteers with gloves.
Oh how we would love to be more gracious this year and invite even more folk in to enjoy The Gathering's annual Soup Kitchen Xmas Lunch, especially given how much greater the need is this year. Sadly however, thanks to the coronavirus we've had to cut our numbers by a third. 😢
Still, we're going to have an amazing time serving our 80 invited guests and we're going to treat them to a royal afternoon of good food and blessings.
The planning has been quite epic and there always seems to be something else to do, but it's also exciting seeing the physical evidence of progress as stuff gets stacked in various corners of our building.
This afternoon we took delivery of 12 tables, table cloths and 80 chairs, as well as getting some final printing done, oh and a quick call to the landlord to see if he can send his plumber around to fix the leaky toilet.
Preparations for The Gathering's annual Soup Kitchen Christmas Lunch are now at 'full steam ahead' as we put together final bits of printing and making sure that nothing has been left behind in our garage at home. We now have a small army of volunteers to stand with and serve alongside The Gathering's own members and it's all getting quite exciting.
As we build up to Sunday The Gathering has been blessed in so many ways, but one of the most useful is our brand new foot operated sanitizer dispenser. I've wanted one for church for ages so it's great to finally have one, especially as it will free us up from having to rely on someone to do the sanitizing.
That brings us to our biggest prayer request for this Sunday. We've already reduced numbers by a third down to 80 guests, we're providing each guest with a mask and sanitizer and the event is outdoors, so we're doing all we can to ensure we're compliant with the relevant Covid protocols. However, we would ask you to stand with us in prayer against any infections being a result of this event.
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.
The end of the year always seems to sneak up on us as life becomes hectic with exams for the boys and church life ramping up a gear ready for our end of year events. This year also had the added stress of our ongoing "will we/won't we" make it to Blighty for Christmas with family, though sadly that is now definitely off.
Joel's final Matric exams seem to be going well and we were thrilled when he described History Paper 1 as "a gift", hopefully this will have encouraged him to keep going.
School seemed to peter out for Eli, who now has an end of term farewell to look forward to on MS Teams. He's thrilled... not.
I'll try and post a bit more in the next day or two, but for now I'll leave you with this pic from my easiest early morning 10k Uni ride yet.
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.
"For I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish." - Jeremiah 31:25
It's good for the soul to get away, especially at times like this when the world looks and feels so uncertain. We didn't think that our annual holiday would happen at all even just a few weeks ago, but thankfully after six months of serious lockdown, SA is beginning to open up again and traveling within the country is now a permissible activity.
The Gathering is gearing up for reopening on Sunday October 4th and we're busy making sure we have all the necessary health & safety protocols in place to enable us to gather safely on Sundays.
It's an exciting prospect being able to gather again with our Gathering family and we can't wait!
There are a few more things to do before the 4th but we're confident that it will all be fine for the big day.
It will be one amazing celebration!
It should have been ready for bottling around the 25th - 28th of August but it didn't stop gurgling until a couple of days ago. The guys who supplied the kit said this was fine and encouraged me to leave it for as long as possible before bottling, so after a mammoth wait it's a case of job done.
All I have to do now is wait for three weeks for the last bit of magic to occur in the bottles and it will be ready for drinking.
As of Thursday 8th October we will be reopening our venue for sit-down Soup Kitchen. Hallelujah!
No more serving pots at the door and asking people to go straight home, now we can allow folk to linger a while, take a load off and spend time in a safe and secure environment.
So there we have it, from midnight on Sunday 20th South Africa moves to Lockdown Level 1 which according to the President is our "new normal" and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
The restrictions around Level 1 remain inconsistent and irrational but we should be used to that by now so I won't focus on them. Rather, there is some good stuff in there which makes for good news and more encouraging times ahead. There's more info on the government website.
The first bit of good news is that churches can reopen properly and are now limited in size by the venue rather than by numbers, meaning that we can as long as we don't exceed 50% of the venue's capacity all is okay.
The old laptop was seven years old and was so slow it was frustrating to work with, whilst the printer we had just never worked properly no matter how many times it was added & removed, switched on & off or rebooted.
It's great to know that at long last church can do its own printing without having to bring everything home to print. Hopefully our home printer won't run out of ink quite so quickly anymore.
Personally, it's been an awesome adventure with some incredible experiences along the way and I wouldn't trade a moment of it for the world.
I love you more than ever Paula!
Here's to the next 29!
XXXXX
As ever, thank you Discovery.
This time we've worked in partnership with St. Andrew's, Kinson in Bournemouth in the UK who have blessed The Gathering with a substantial gift allowing for these food parcels with quite a bit left over for our planned Soup Kitchen Christmas Lunch in December.
Paula did the shopping yesterday and managed to get 17 items for each parcel to which we've added two bags of soya mince and some soap, making them some very nice parcels.
We have earmarked ten of them for folks we know are in need and the other ten will be delivered by church members to people they know in the community who are in need.
It's great to be able to share the blessings of God in such a way!
He has now been re-homed and will grow in to yet another spectacular Jade plant to join the many others already growing in the garden.
I do like the variegated nature of this one, the contrast between red and green is quite striking.
Read more about Jade plants here: Jade plants and Trees.
The best part of this is that we're in the middle of a cold front which means more rain is due over the next 24 hours and there are more cold fronts expected later in the month, all of which will bring more rain and fill the dams that bit more.
Whilst this is good news, it doesn't mean the drought is over and we can go back to old habits with water. Cape Town's population has grown by over half a million people since 2015 which puts a huge stress on the water supply.
Eli was off with a friend for his birthday, celebrating in Montagu, and Joel had his long time buddy Sean over for a couple of nights so we were able to decamp to Kalk Bay to enjoy some down time.
We have to thank The Gathering for allowing us the time off and for stepping up and leading in our absence, you guys rock!
Thankfully the storm held off until a while after our Soup Kitchen so everyone would have got back to wherever they stay safely.
Getting back to anywhere near my level of fitness pre-lockdown and herniated disc has been really hard work, but for the first time in a long time I feel on top of the world after a great week of boxing training. This time last week even it was a different story as I felt exhausted, so it's good to know that I'm getting back to where I want to be.
Each parcel contained a couple of kilograms of soya mince, lentils, maize meal as well as soup mix, several tins and a few other bits, and we hope and pray they are a real blessing to those that received them
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