It's nothing on the scale of Trump's ambitions, but it's still exciting and encouraging to see the wall going in in The Gathering's new home. One gets a sense of how much better our meeting space will be and how much space we have for our office, kitchen and kids venue. It will be a little squashed at the back but worth it.-
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
It's nothing on the scale of Trump's ambitions, but it's still exciting and encouraging to see the wall going in in The Gathering's new home. One gets a sense of how much better our meeting space will be and how much space we have for our office, kitchen and kids venue. It will be a little squashed at the back but worth it.
Following on from my "Busy Week" post, the jobs that needed doing eventually got done, but this being Africa they just took a little longer than planned, but I'm very happy with how they turned out.The glass tinting works a dream and offers us a degree of privacy which is essential for our Homework Club, but it doesn't completely shut the outside world out. It was also a fraction of the cost of blinds.
It's great to see Eli fully committed to his football. He's loving playing for De Beers AFC and has done incredibly well to become a mainstay of defence in the Under 12s team.Being Brits, we're used to football being in foul weather, but we find it highly amusing (and a little pathetic) how so many cry off at the first hint of rain. Eli wouldn't dream of missing his football practice, no matter what the weather was doing! Some of those kids, or rather their 'soccer moms' need to get a life.
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.
In the midst of all the busyness at The Gathering's new home, it was nice to finally take a few minutes to drink in the view we will get to enjoy in the coming months.All the jobs we were expecting to get done on Monday have now been finished, we have a shiny roller door, the front window has been replaced and the electrics have been sorted.
Today is the shortest day of the year (so you lovely northern hemisphere peeps get to say goodbye to the sun tomorrow 😉) which means the sunrise was unusually late and this gave me the opportunity to get two lovely snaps of it. This one was taken from our drive as I was about to take Joel to school. By the time I got the camera I had probably missed the best of it but the sunrise still looked pretty cool.
Today should be quite a big day in the life of The Gathering's new home. With just under two weeks until we start Gathering there, there is a lot to be sorted out.It all starts today as the landlord is having a roller-door fitted so that should be security sorted. This should also mean that the Coca Cola sign for next door's shop be removed as the landlord has told them to get a smaller one sorted. Once this is done we can put our own sign up.
Yesterday was a public holiday as we enjoyed Youth Day, so Errol, Phillimon, Eli & myself took the opportunity to spend a few hours in The Gathering's new home knocking things about, taking down a wall, removing the counter and then fixing holes, followed by lots of sweeping and mopping!
I've been wanting to take some photos of The Gathering's Soup Kitchen to show the children at Eli's school as a thank you for their hard work making sandwiches each week, and to try and challenge them as we show them that not everyone has a privileged background.Rather than patronise folk with the usual full on photos, I wanted to capture their hands receiving soup and sandwiches and I have to say I'm very pleased with these.
Once again it's election day in the UK and once again we're both excluded from voting. I get that we've lived outside the UK for too long, but here's what I really don't get: South Africans living in the UK who meet the residency criteria (that's lived in Blighty for more than three months) are eligible as Commonwealth citizens to vote in the UK, but there is no reciprocal agreement, meaning that despite living out here for 14 years and being a Permanent Resident for 5+ years we cannot vote in any South African elections!
Here are a few random photos from the last week or two which I wanted to post but didn't get around to.
The first couple are of our Soup Kitchen which is growing massively now that winter is here. The fact that we were regularly feeding 40+ people through summer was quite something, but now we're feeding 70+ and still more new people are coming each week.
The South African Weather Service has put out a severe storm warning as they predict the worst storm for 30 years is about to slam in to the Western Cape.The municipality has ordered all schools to be closed for the day tomorrow and people are generally being advised to stay at home. So sadly we're cancelling our Homework Club tomorrow afternoon and our home group in the evening.
Having been at the Firgrove Shell for just over two years we've been given notice to quit the premises and so The Gathering is on the hunt for a new home.The Shell Garage is undergoing some massive renovations beginning in July and they need to move their admin back upstairs, and so for purely business reasons they have asked us to move.
When I saw this Facebook post earlier today I couldn't help but respond knowing that The Gathering serves soup and sandwiches every Thursday in the Firgrove community.Having invited the poster along I wasn't really expecting her to turn up, but it was a pleasure to meet her at tonight's Soup Kitchen and to be able to serve her and her grandchildren.
I love that we radically impacted her and her expectations of the community just by doing what we always do.
Planting a new church is never easy and doing it from scratch is tougher still, and at times it's easy to feel down and like nothing is going to plan. Those negative feelings can be especially tough to deal with when growth is slow and commitment of some is sporadic at best.However, as one persists and remains faithful in prayer, things begin to turn and whilst I don't think church planters ever have that feeling of "we've done it" things do seem a lot more positive through faith and prayer.
Finally after a few weeks I managed to get hold of a big enough piece of netting to finish off Eli's football goal and he's really pleased with it.The completion of the goal nicely coincided with him finally getting his new De Beers football shirt which has his name and favourite number on the back and if I'm honest, he's a little bit more excited by the kit than the goal.
Oh well, I tried!
Paula & I had the privilege of attending Green Shoots 5th Birthday Celebration last night.For those that haven't kept up, our Homework Club at The Gathering runs Green Shoots Maths@Home online programme.
Our Homework Club is a complete joy to run and as an extra privilege last night I was asked to share a little about the impact Green Shoots has had on our learners and the wider community.
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