Thankfully however, we got to enjoy the ride together and grew old together. Today these youngsters are very different people, but we grew up and old together, celebrating and embracing the changes along the way, and that has been an absolute joy.
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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 -
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HOPE Home Based Care Team -
Gathering Ground -
Staying fit as a family -
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
Showing posts with label wedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wedding. Show all posts
Time with family is always precious and a blessing, and to spend some of that time together celebrating the marriage of our oldest niece was just the cherry on the cake.
One of my biggest joys has to be talking to folk about my boys because they're both doing so well. They've both had some tough stuff to face and deal with and yet they've both overcome and each are in a really good place. Sometimes as I'm talking about them, I feel as if I'm making it up about how well they're doing, but then I realise I'm really not.
(with apologies to The Art Of Noise)
So here I am in Blighty ready for the wedding or our oldest niece tomorrow, it's going to be a lovely day and a very special occasion, I feel privileged to be here and honoured to play a tiny part in the day in walking my sister-in-law down the aisle and leading the prayers for Suzi & Luke.
After an exciting ten days back in Blighty with family to celebrate our middle niece's wedding, Paula arrived home this morning, much to the relief of all the trousers.
The junior trousers survived and were fed, watered and made it to their various commitments on time as well as getting home again safe and sound, so I'll call that a win.
Today is our 30th wedding anniversary which traditionally is Pearl. Now I can't afford to give Paula a pearl necklace and she wouldn't want one anyway, but what I can do is share a pearl of wisdom...
Paula has already written the most beautiful post over on Facebook, so there's not a huge amount left for me to say, but if I could offer one tip for longevity in marriage it would be this: keep God at the centre of it!
Personally, it's been an awesome adventure with some incredible experiences along the way and I wouldn't trade a moment of it for the world.
I love you more than ever Paula!
Here's to the next 29!
XXXXX
For our Silver Wedding Anniversary last year I wanted to give Paula a gift that would last but also one that had a cost, not a financial cost, but a personal one. So, starting on our anniversary last year I gave Paula the gift of letters. No, I didn't give her the alphabet, though it would have been cheaper, easier and a whole lot quicker. No, what it actually meant was that I committed to writing to her every day for a year, sending her a letter or a card. Some letters would be posted, some I would hand to her and others were left somewhere for her to find. I know I missed a few days but looking at the little mountain of letters and cards I know did my best. But more importantly, it was a huge blessing to me and a great lesson, but more on that in a bit...I have to say it was a lot of fun. It was great to rekindle the letter writing skill (we used to write to each other constantly before we got married), especially in this age of connectivity and constant social media interactions when pens are rarely required. The whole experience was enjoyable and the highlight was intentionally setting aside a few minutes each day to write a letter or card. It meant that for a few precious minutes all I had to do was think about Paula and what I wanted to say to her.
Those were treasured moments!
We had a great evening on Tuesday night as The Gathering hosted a marriage enrichment evening using Mark Gungor's Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage.We served pizza and cool drinks with the video and settled back for a lot of laughs and some brilliant teaching.
We've been wanting to do this for a while but getting all of our couples together has been virtually impossible, so we went ahead with most of us there and we're so glad that we did.
We put this short slideshow together for our Renewal of Vows service at St. George's back in July.
The photos start back in 1985 when we started dating and go right through to this year.
We hope you enjoy it.
We seem to have been celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary for a while now, but then again, why not?! It's quite a milestone and one the world would like to have bet against. We often laugh about the fact that someone (who shall remain nameless) gave us six months when we announced our engagement. 24½ years later we hope they feel differently.In many respects we always believed we would hit this milestone and carry on way past it, but in other respects we're more than amazed that we've gone the distance so far.
To say that we'd have gotten this far without our faith would be foolish, all honour must go to our Lord for sustaining us!
So we've renewed our vows in St. George's, the church we were married in all those years ago. We've been to Paris for a week to celebrate on our own in style and now we're enjoying some special time at home with our boys, who think we're ancient because none of their friends' parents have been married for anywhere near as long. Oh the joys of being older parents!
We've never done this before but thought it would be good to share our September prayerletter on the blog. We hope you enjoy it...We can’t quite believe that we’re writing this having just celebrated our Silver Anniversary in Paris. We’re feeling incredibly blessed and privileged to have been able to celebrate in such spectacular fashion!
However, there is a story and testimony behind this which we want to share...
2016 has been a great year so far, and to be honest it just keeps on getting better and better!It was prophesied in The Gathering early in 2016 that this year would be a "year of blessings" and this has certainly been our experience and we're deeply grateful to God for the blessings poured out in our lives.
Today marks another major blessing for me as I've been married for exactly half my life today.
As we approach our Silver Wedding Anniversary next month I'm going to post some thoughts, reflections and anecdotes about marriage... Back in the day when I was still a practicing social worker for the local government in Blighty, it was deemed politically incorrect to refer to one's wife or husband as wife or husband. Rather, we were encouraged to be more inclusive and refer to our wife or husband as our partner.
We were a little bit early when we renewed our vows two Sundays ago, our Silver Anniversary isn't until the 14th of September, but the opportunity was too good to miss what with us being back in St. George's for our last Sunday. We had a great morning and must thank St. George's and the Rev Mandy Carr for allowing us to hijack the bulk of the morning service to do this!
It was also a great privilege to celebrate with some truly special friends, we know many couldn't make it and we missed you, but we're thankful to those of you who were able to join us.
I had the privilege of speaking for a few minutes and I did say that we should really call this "a celebration of Paula's madness" having put up with me for 25 years.
I loved every minute of being back in Zim, despite the constant power cuts, water shortages and shocking roads. I loved how the locals don't waste their time complaining and moaning about how bad it is but rather get on with life. I loved every minute of being back there because it made me realise just how much of my heart I left there when we were thrown out in 2003.
When asked how today went I simply replied: "Today was one of the happiest days of my life!"Ever since we left Zimbabwe so abruptly in 2003 I've longed to return to see our many friends that we never got to say goodbye to.
So to be here for the wedding of our dear friends Ziggy & Mercy and to get to meet up with Linus, Emilia and Shepherd was a real privilege.
To celebrate our twenty first wedding anniversary we had a very pleasant couple of nights away in the stunning seaside town of Kalk Bay on the Cape Peninsula, somewhere we've been wanting to explore for sometime.To finally get the chance to mooch around the place sans enfants was a real blessing and we'll definitely be back sometime soon.
Twentyone years ago our dear friend Richard pulled out all the stops on the organ and gave it some welly as he struck up Tocatta in C by Zipoli as the love of my life began walking down the aisle.I have been incredibly blessed by the fact that shortly after 1.30pm Paula said "I do" and I'll be forever grateful to her and to God for the amazing time we've had together ever since.
To marry someone special is great. To marry your soul-mate is fantastic. To spend a lifetime with the love of your life is simply awesome!
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