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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
Here are some photos taken this morning before Joel went to nursery. Joel seems to love Eli more with each day that passes and currently really enjoys wheeling him around in his pushchair. Between doing this and playing his guitar Joel is as happy as it's possible to be! Despite this we are experiencing some behavioural challenges as Joel copes with going to nursery 5 mornings a week and getting less attention from Mum & Dad than he's used to. We're going to try and address this so at lunchtime today Paula & Joel will go out on their own for lunch, hopefully they'll have a lot of fun.
These last few days in Chris Nissen have been really good in terms of time spent with people, but also in terms of putting life into perspective.
On Thursday last week we started our men's Bible study again after a long break. It was really good to catch up and hear everybody's news. Sadly, Cyril's cousin died earlier during the week, they shared their house in CNP, and now Cyril concerned about what will happen to the house as his cousin's family don't like Cyril very much. Also, Danny has been thrown out of his house, this is all very sad, but you may remember some of our posts about Anna Bop who died last year. Danny's house belonged to her, but after her death he remained in the house, but now Anna Bop's mother has sold the house. This is illegal in CNP as the properties belong to the CNP Trust, so now we're involved in sorting out this mess. Meanwhile Danny is staying with friends in the community but can't stay for long as his host are already severely stretched! Despite the bad news, I was really encouraged by the group and their attitudes and faith that as I drove home I realised that this group alone make my time in CNP more than worth it!
On Thursday last week we started our men's Bible study again after a long break. It was really good to catch up and hear everybody's news. Sadly, Cyril's cousin died earlier during the week, they shared their house in CNP, and now Cyril concerned about what will happen to the house as his cousin's family don't like Cyril very much. Also, Danny has been thrown out of his house, this is all very sad, but you may remember some of our posts about Anna Bop who died last year. Danny's house belonged to her, but after her death he remained in the house, but now Anna Bop's mother has sold the house. This is illegal in CNP as the properties belong to the CNP Trust, so now we're involved in sorting out this mess. Meanwhile Danny is staying with friends in the community but can't stay for long as his host are already severely stretched! Despite the bad news, I was really encouraged by the group and their attitudes and faith that as I drove home I realised that this group alone make my time in CNP more than worth it!
We've not posted much over the last week or so, partly because we've been very busy but also because we were feeling a bit demotivated after a number of events which haven't made 2006 the best start to a year we've ever had! Dean being robbed was awful, but at least he was unharmed, then the head gasket on his car blew leaving us with a hefty garage bill and then our Harddisk crashed and we lost 3 months worth of photos (yes dean does do weekly backups but still disaster struck!).
Paula had another good morning in CNP today. Dina went with her to introduce her to some new people and she met 6 new women, which is great! Her Tuesday evening social evenings will now start to be held in the homes of these people. They are all keen to get to know her and spend more time with each other. It was interesting that half of them were sick to a varying degree, from eye infections to asthma to bad hip, and none will go to the doctor. This is not because of cost, but because they don't trust them and are either scared or embarassed or both to go. This is not surprising as people are often needlessly and publicly humiliated by the doctor at the clinic. It is a long, hard slog to convince people that they must go. Paula now goes into CNP with an obligatory pack of Ibuprofen to dish out, but this is really not good and certainly isn't a long term solution. One of the ladies was so sick we had to lift her up to take the pills. Please pray for God to move so that this stigma is removed. They all want Paula or Dean or someone to go with them to speak to the doctor, but this just isn't possible.
Paula went back in to Chris Nissen on Friday for the first time since Christmas week and all our activity collecting Eli and getting ourselves used to being new parents!! 'Her ladies' were so pleased to see her again, but can't really understand why she won't take Eli in to see them there yet. We are doing this purely for health reasons in that Eli's BCG jab takes 3 months to kick in and the TB rate in CNP is so high that we can't take the risk. Maybe, making this stand ourselves as a family will shake people up to take their medication and see what a serious problem TB is in the community.
Here Joel's attempting to wake Eli up. Joel doesn't really understand why Eli is so boring at the moment, however we know that will change all too quickly.
Check out Troy's Blog: RAVEN Team
I've been wanting to post about Katrina again for a while but didn't know what to write or how to go about it, so I'm really grateful to Troy for taking time out to comment on our Blog.
Dean has the rest of this week off so we're making sure we have lots of family time together, particularly making a point of spending time with Joel. So yesterday we went for a walk along the Lourensford River so Joel could throw some stones in (he loves doing that) and then we cut across to the sports fields so that Joel could try and fly his kite again. Thankfully the wind wasn't too strong so the kite flew really well. As you can see below, Joel really got the hang of the kite and he had a great time flying it.
Joel & Dad digging holes in the sand on Strand Beach. How else were we supposed to spend New year's Day?
Joel and Sam playing on the beach at Strand. We had a lovely morning with Pete & Ash and the kids, rounded off with a McDonalds lunch. It was such a pleasure to spend time with the Smyth family again as we rarely get to see each other these days. Pete & Ash were incredibly supportive friends during our time in Zim, especially as we struggled with the issue of moving on from the Just Children Foundation. Pete now leads the 'God First' church in Jo'burg.
Some of you may remember that Roger was Best Man at our wedding back in 1991.
On Thursday Dean joined some of the key CNP residents for a Thank you / Christmas lunch hosted by Chris Nissen himself. The lunch was great and the guys from CNP relly enjoyed the venue as the restaurant juts out into the sea with stunning views of False Bay, Table Mountain & the Cape Peninsula. Sadly, Chris Himself never pitched which was a real shame, but a good time was had by all regardless. Usefully, Dean got to meet some of the key players in the local police force including the station commander of Somerset West police station and the provincial director of Helderberg area police. Contacts which will definitely come in handy!
Dean & Joel went to the Nature Reserve again yesterday, mainly to give Paula & Eli a bit of a break but also to give Joel some special time with Dad. We had some real fun as you can see from the 'Dilemma' video posted below. We're not sure where Joel gets his flirting skills from but they're definitely not from his Dad (probably gets it from his mother!).Whilst we were feeding the ducks the Cape Weaver Birds were getting quite bold so we put some crumbs on a post a watched them swoop in and take them.
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