The Finnie family in Blighty, December 2021
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
Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng
Thankful Thursdays.JPG)
HOPE Home Based Care Team
Gathering Ground
Staying fit as a family
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
I also got to test out the new barber's chair we bought so that Remi no longer needs to bend down to do his haircutting. The poor lad is serving his heart out giving amazing haircuts to our Soup Kitchen regulars, but all the while doing his back in because we didn't have a proper chair.
Last night's Soup Kitchen was as chilled as ever, especially as Remi was once again with us offering free haircuts to those that wanted one.
The evening was also brightened up by the visit of Fuad!
We've not seen Fuad for quite a while, so it was great to catch up with him again, and it was a joy to be able to bless him with a haircut as well as soup.
Whilst we were away over Christmas we got to spend a very happy hour with some good friends, chatting about life and having a laugh. I was struck by their new dog, a rescue from the local animal shelter. She's called Rosie and apparently has bitten everyone who has attempted to stroke her, including the local policeman.
The Gathering's Soup Kitchen continues to do some sterling work in terms of serving the neediest and most vulnerable in the community, but also building bridges with folk who need that little bit more in terms of support & care, and it's a real privilege to be able to serve through the church.
Whilst we love what we do, and wouldn't change it for the world, the responsibilities we carry on behalf of The Gathering can become tiring, so sometimes it's just good essential to escape together.
We're in the countdown for our trip to Blighty, and life just seems to get busier & busier.
In the midst of preparing for our trip, we're still juggling life and having to make some plans for the future, especially regarding my health.
We're really excited to be coming back to Blighty for a month, it means we'll miss a month of winter here, but most importantly, it means we'll get to spend time with Eli, having not seen him for over 18 months!
After the joy of our three Christmas Specials at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen, it's great to be back to the joy of our normal Soup Kitchen, replete with loadshedding.
Butternut is back in season locally, so it was a case of prepping and chopping 18kgs of them to make one hundred litres of delicious home-made soup.
One of the many joys in leading church, is watching the ebb & flow of church life, and how some people are planted in for the long haul whilst others are with you for just a short time.
Today at The Gathering we had the privilege of sending Delena (& her husband John) off in prayer (we prayed our best prayers), and love to begin a new life in the Eastern Cape in a town called Buffels Vlei.
As ever, his photographs are truly stunning and he perfectly captured the heart and essence of The Gathering's Soup Kitchen.
We'll be serving 200 litres of home made Pea & Ham Soup. As well as serving our regulars with the usual packet of instant noodles, each recipient will receive a yummy home baked cookie, and the school age kids will each get a goodie bag containing a few school supplies together with a some sweets.
Today's particular obstacle was perhaps the strangest to overcome...
The water in Firgrove had been off since 6pm the previous night and it still wasn't on at 11am when I needed 100 litres of water to get ready making the soup.
It's a great blessing to see so much food stacked up in the church office/kitchen, especially knowing that Paula negotiated such a great deal with the shopkeeper that we got +/-1700 individual packets of noodles for the princely sum of R1.60 each (7p each in Blighty). In the local shops a cheap packet of noodles would normally cost around R5 each (22p).
What a blessing. Thank you LORD!
This picture warms my heart as it captures the very heart and DNA of The Gathering.
We don't run our Soup Kitchen as an evangelistic outreach, and we put no conditions on who can or cannot receive soup, we serve all comers.
The reason for this is that we use our weekly Soup Kitchen as a way of thanking God for all He's done for us and as such we want to share those blessings with others.
I wasn't supposed to be preaching at The Gathering this morning, but events in the week meant that it was over to me, and as ever it was a joy and a privilege to share the Word.
During the week I had briefly contemplated giving our Gathering over to an impromptu Testimony Sunday, but decided against this because I knew we would be low on numbers this morning, and partly because I knew I was being lazy in not preparing a word.
Well before I even got up to preach, God had interrupted our Gathering spectacularly and it turned in to an impromptu Testimony Sunday with testimony after testimony being shared.
Testimony Sunday at The Gathering is always a joy and a blessing, and this morning was no different!
The stream of testimonies of God's goodness just kept flowing. What was clear is that most had been having a tough year, but each acknowledged that it was only by God's awesome grace that they had got to where they were and were blessed because of His loving kindness.
