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Showing posts sorted by date for query homework club. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Soup Kitchen

As ever it's a joy and a privilege to be able to serve our community through The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen, and last night was no exception.

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.

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!

Soup Kitchen

It's not always clear blue skies and beautiful sunsets, sometimes the weather turns hideous and yesterday afternoon this was the precursor to some of that hideous weather.

Thankfully the storm held off until a while after our Soup Kitchen so everyone would have got back to wherever they stay safely.

Yesterday (Sunday 19th) was Mandela Day in which all South Africans are encouraged to give 67 minutes of their time to serving a good cause.

However, I find it odd that given how passionate Madiba was about education, we have a government that doesn't appear to value it at all.

Lockdown Reflection

When strict lockdown Level 5 began in South Africa 110 days ago, I think we all felt a very real level of "now what?" in relation to church life.  Our soup kitchen and Homework Club were thriving, going from strength to strength and I was excitedly preparing my Gathering Ground ladies group with training for a big year ahead. The Gathering had been consistently receiving prophetic words and pictures from God about expansion and birthing pains and getting ready for all the new that was to come. Lockdown certainly did not seem to fit at all with any of this, and I personally spent a lot of time initially asking God, had we heard Him wrongly? and, what are you doing in this Lord?

Same Storm

I came across this the other day on social media and it really struck a chord with me, and after spending a couple of days explaining to a few folk some of the realities of lockdown here in SA for many that The Gathering reaches out to and ministers to, I thought it would make a good post on here.

I have to confess to being just a little bit tired of hearing people in privileged positions (politicians and so called celebrities and a few others) telling the rest of us that 'we're in the same boat'.  They trotted that rubbish out under austerity and it wasn't true then just as it isn't true now.

We are NOT in the same boat! We are in the same storm for sure but not the same boat. How some will cruise through this storm and how some will barely tread water in the hope of surviving  are two very very different things.

Food Hampers

This morning we had the privilege of delivering seventeen food hampers (in the form of grocery gift cards) to some of the neediest families in Firgrove.

We got fed up with waiting for govt to come through with their food parcels and decided to get the ball rolling ourselves.

Lockdown Looms

This blog is long neglected now and I've been wondering about what to do with it. Should I shut it down? Should I just leave it as a souvenir of the last few years or should I delete it and move on to other things? Then with the lockdown being announced I thought I'd revive it for now and use it to keep a lockdown diary of sorts, so here goes...

It was great to see The Gathering's Homework Club back up and running on Wednesday & Thursday this week, and it promises to be another great year.

The kids were really buzzing about the restart with many of them hanging around The Gathering for a day or two prior to the restart and it was great to welcome so many familiar faces back and to meet a whole load of new ones..

The late start was due to it taking a while to find the right person to be our Facilitator, but once Marie was appointed the final admin went in to full swing to get everything ready, and it was so good to be back doing what we love.

Please pray for Firgrove and more specifically her children.

Late last year we found out that two of The Gathering's Homework Club kids are leaders of rival gangs. Initially we found this quite amusing given the diminutive stature of said kids and the fact that they're only about 10 or 11 years old.

This is a week overdue but it was great to celebrate another fantastic year of The Gathering's Homework Club last Friday 23rd as we held our now annual Awards Ceremony.

It's always a joy to celebrate the kids achievements and to show their families just how well they're doing, and some of our kids are doing incredibly well.

Decisions, Decisions...

Decisions, decisions, decisions....

As the year winds down towards the summer holidays it would be nice to have a bit of breathing space, but as ever that's rarely our experience and once again we find ourselves having to make some pretty major decisions ready for the new year.

Homework Club

We've not posted much about The Gathering's Homework Club for a while, despite posting loads of stuff about the Soup Kitchen, so here's an update on things....

As the school year winds towards the end we've had a few kids drop out of the Homework Club.  Some have moved away from Firgrove and some just think they're too cool for school.

New Chairs

As we step out in faith and see The Gathering's Soup Kitchen and Homework Club growing, so we're also seeing growth on Sunday mornings which is a huge blessing!

As The Gathering grows and is blessed, so we need to step out in more faith trusting that we will see the Kingdom extended in Firgrove, South Africa and beyond.

So recently we stepped out in faith and bought 50 new chairs of which we received the first 25 this morning.

I'm thrilled to see that The Gathering's Homework Club has 15 winners in the first competition of Term 3.

Our kids are progressing nicely and are becoming quite a dominant force in the termly competitions held online by Green Shoots.

This is a real encouragement and I can't wait to hear how each of our kids has done at the end of the school year.
It's great to be back and getting in the swing of the life of The Gathering again.

This morning has been largely about getting a few of my UK purchases up and running which will hopefully make church and especially our Homework Club run a little better.

Adopted Son

It seems like a long time ago that Paula dropped me off at Cape Town airport to fly to England, but just three weeks later I really can't wait to go home!

I've had a fantastic time, reconnected with many good friends, and spent time with school mates I hadn't seen in 35 years. I had the privilege of spending time with some truly inspiring fellow pastors & ministers and can't believe that a few of them even let me preach in their churches (I'm sure one day I'll be found out 😂 ).

But the greatest joy has been spending time with family, and this last week has been special as I've never spent so long with Paula's sister & brother-in-law on my own before. All I can say is that my love and respect for Lisa & Stephen grows exponentially each time I see them and realise just how much they quietly get on with as they serve and support others around them. I really love you both! XX

I had one of the saddest and most frustrating conversations of my life at The Gathering’s Soup Kitchen last night.

Frustrating because it was of a theme that keeps rearing its ugly head, and sad because we the church are responsible.

We've had the honour of hosting a few visitors at The Gathering's Homework Club over the last few days and it's always a joy to talk about it and to share our story and how we got to where we are now.

It's been quite a journey from not having a clue what the Homework Club would look like to now being a growing and confident outfit, and we're always happy to share the journey with others.

Finally, 2018 gets going.

The New Year is a strange thing out here in that it falls in the middle of the summer holidays, with industry shutting down for a few weeks, so most people don't go back to work until the second week of January. Schools only went back last week and so The Gathering's Homework Club only just started this week and won't do a full week until next week.

Wednesday and Thursday were brilliant as The gathering's Homework Club kicked off again and welcomed 11 new kids and 21 returnees. The Homework Club is full now and we have quite a waiting list which is great.

Having learnt a few lessons last year, we started the year with a few ground rules and boundaries which seemed to go well, I guess time will tell.  The big difference though is that we now have eight kids per session so Precious (our facilitator) can't sit down, so she was constantly walking around the table and that kept things a lot more orderly.