Last night at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen I think we might just have found a way to communicate the levels of hunger...
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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 -
HOPE Home Based Care Team -
Gathering Ground -
Staying fit as a family -
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
Showing posts sorted by date for query soup kitchen. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query soup kitchen. Sort by relevance Show all posts
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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