To Be Continued...

It was with a little tinge of sadness that we served our last Soup Kitchen in The Gathering's current home. although we're not officially in our new home until the 1st of July we'll be serving next week's Soup Kitchen from there.

The sadness however is far outweighed by the sense of excitement, not just amongst The Gathering's members but our Soup Kitchen regulars are seemingly just as excited. As we were telling the guys about next week they all told us that they already knew about our move, which means the local grapevine is working well.

We also hosted our last Homework Club for this term and the kids were a little gutted to realise that it won't be running during the school holiday. We're definitely sensing an opportunity for some kind of holiday club in the Summer holidays.

Soup Kitchen Christmas Lunch

Wow, what a day that was!

For me it was the most exciting day of the year and a tremendous privilege to be a part of.

It was amazing to see how the seed of a crazy idea planted just over a year ago came to bear such incredible fruit.

Soup For All

The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen is definitely the highlight of my week, from cooking the soup in the morning, to serving it in the evening and clearing up afterwards, it's pure joy to be able to serve our community.

It's also a joy to see our venue take on a real world practical use as it's packed to the brim with locals wanting soup and sandwiches.

Crazy Busy

The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen was crazily busy last night as the 100 litres of homemade Cream of Chicken Soup gone in 25 minutes!

In fact, the soup went so quickly that no one was able to have seconds and the last six people only received a cup of soup and a packet of noodles because we couldn't fill any more pots. This was quite heartbreaking, and so next week we will be dusting off our two 70lt pans to make 140 litres of soup.

Happy Place

It's great to be back in my happy place making soup on a Thursday morning for our Soup Kitchen later this evening.

Today's soup is a butternut, carrot, tomato and beef sausage offering and so far it's tasting delicious, even if I say so myself.

We've been blessed by a family who have been providing the soup for the last few months and we're thankful for the blessing that they were. However, we felt it was time to take control again and reclaim the Soup Kitchen as an outreach of The Gathering.

I hadn't realised just how much I had missed making the soup until today!

Soup Kitchen

Last night's Soup Kitchen was another blessed evening with The Gathering.

As ever our regulars were queueing well before we started serving, though the crowd was smaller than normal due to it being payments weeks for the various social grants such as pensions.

Despite the lower number we still served 140 litres of delicious homemade soup which was well received. It also meant we were able to be very generous in filling pots and giving seconds to those that wanted.

Double The Excitement, Double The Blessings

Today was doubly exciting because not only is it a Thursday and we get to serve our regulars at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen,but today our Matha@Home Homework Club restarted after an almost two year furlough thanks to the pandemic.

It just felt so right to have the Homework Club operating again and the kids were really enjoying themselves and the attention they were receiving from Delena our beloved facilitator.

100lts Coming Up

The highlight of my week is always The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen, and today I am blessed to once again be making 100 litres of delicious homemade Cream of Chicken Soup.

These are the main ingredients but I'll also be adding a lot of salt, pepper, garlic, herbs & spices and some soup powder just to top off the flavour.

One Hundred Litres

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.

Thursdays

It's a real joy to see our new Homework Club spaces filling up.

This is our early group from 3 to 4pm on a Thursday, they're such a calm group which is a welcome contrast to the crazy bunch on a Wednesday afternoon! 

Soup Kitchen - Our New Normal

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.

Making Soup

Making the soup for The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen is (and has been for a long time) my happy place.

I really enjoy every aspect of it, and love the fact that I can pretty much switch off and just let the process unfold.

Blessing Upon Blessing

"Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

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.

Soup Kitchen

There was such a happy vibe at our soup kitchen last night. Maybe it was because Paula got to join us for a change, though I suspect that it was because it felt like a warm Spring evening which just encouraged guys to hang around a bit longer and chill together.

Either way it made for a pleasant and fun evening serving our regular friends.

The soup went down a storm and everyone left sated and very happy.

Thank you for the blessings Lord!

Soup Kitchen Xmas Lunch Prep

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.

Future Plans To Present Realities

When I was in the UK earlier this year I was really excited to talk about two future plans we had for The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen.

The first one was our Christmas Lunch for 120 of our regulars and the second was taking our soup up from 70lts to 100lts, but we were really going to need some miraculous blessings for these to happen.

Simple Joys

For me one of the simplest joys in life is my time spent preparing the soup for The Gathering's weekly soup kitchen and then serving the soup later in the evening. I really value the time and space as I prepare the soup and enjoy thinking about the folk who will be receiving it. There's something very therapeutic about it all and this is topped off by the joy of seeing our regulars each week and hearing a bit about what they've been up to. It's also great to meet a few new people each week.

I was particularly touched by one guy who has been coming for a few weeks because he came to me at the end held out his hand and just said "I want to thank you". I've often found the poorest and most vulnerable to be some of the politest and most respectful people one can meet.

70 Litres Of Deliciousness

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!

Highlight Of The Week

The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen remains the highlight of my week.

Whilst it's always a calm and laid back affair in which the church is able to be incredibly generous to those that come for food, it's different every week and you can never fully be sure of what you might see or hear during the course of it.

Each week we get a never ending stream of tales and stories about why we should give someone more of this and someone else more of that...

Disjointed Week

It's been a funny old week.

It has been a week of small jobs and disjointed routine, but somehow in the midst of that it has also been quite satisfying. I'll explain the disjointed bit up top...Paula is now in Spain for some valuable time with her big Sis & family, she left on Wednesday and her penance for abandoning us was 34 hours of travelling 😂. So I'm attempting to impersonate Super Dad for a couple of weeks but I'm not very good at impersonations.