Prayer Spaces at La Mare last week went extremely well. We really enjoyed spending time with the children, getting to know them better. They seemed to connect well to each station and particularly enjoyed the calm jars. This was great because it was the first time we had done it, but they loved it!

This week in between all the bank holidays we’ll be visiting Vale, Acorn House and St Martins with our puppet assembly. The first one last week went really well!

Phil will be starting a new OT Mini course at Blanchelande and all our lunch clubs in our senior schools are back up and running. It was great to catch up with the students last week and hear about what they got up to over the Easter holidays. This week we are exploring the characteristic of being servant-hearted and discussing how we can serve others.

Below are some photos from La Mare. Some of the Year 6 students took some for us so more will be on the way!

After a refreshing Easter break we are back and ready to go. This week we have started our new primary assembly. The wonderful Nigel Lewis has written a great puppet play for us to present to students this half term. The puppet Oscar is super excited about a new holiday he has created called ‘Oscar Day’ where everyone has to give him presents and eat his favourite food in celebration of him. He thinks Oscar Day is far more exciting than Easter and Christmas to the point where he thinks they should be got rid of!! His best friend Amy, with the help of the PACE presenter helps Oscar to see why Easter and Christmas are rather important and getting rid of those celebrations might upset God. Oscar realises that he is perhaps being a bit selfish as he reflects on God’s greatest commandment to love God and to love others.

Our first lessons of the term happened last week with Year 5 at La Houguette. We looked at the Easter story asking the question “Did God intend Jesus to be crucified and if so was Jesus aware of this?”
In the lesson we went through what happened during Holy Week. One child commented that God was “very organised”. And as funny as this might sound, we thought he was right! God had every bit planned and we drew back to this when we visited the question again at the end. The children also got the chance to plant a sunflower seed. While they are away this week in France, we’re hoping they’ll start to grow for when they come back!

This week we are also busy with Prayer Spaces at La Mare. Our first day has gone very well with KS1. Some older children from the school are working on making a video for us so watch this space! A highlight from today was when a child from reception wrote “GOD” when he could make anything he was thankful for out of Plahdoh!

We would also like to share with you the latest Spring Newsletter giving an overview of all we got up to last term!

Last weekend it was great to have Tom Greene over from Walk Through the Bible UK.

Tom came to lead an OT Live event on Saturday 6^th April from 10 till 4, helping us to explore the Big Picture of the Old Testament. We had about 40 people attend from a number of churches and the feedback was very good.

OT Live is the adult/Church version of the OT Mini programme we run in primary schools across the island – a work that has grown dramatically over the last few years. Since we started in 2008, we have now taught 154 courses in all 14 primary schools……..to 5,249 children! With the growth in demand, we have needed to train some new presenters to join the team, so Tom stayed on to run a 3-day training course and we now have 3 new presenters: Nigel Lewis (Les Camps Methodist), Major Claire Hill (Salvation Army) and Emma Backhouse (Holy Trinity). We are very grateful to Tom; and to Delancey Elim church for hosting the events and Angie & Richard Pollard for accommodating Tom.

The end of term has now arrived and we are grateful for the opportunity to rest and re-energise ourselves before the start of another busy term. We thank God for all the amazing opportunities we have had to serve the schools of Guernsey this term. We have delivered 13 Walk Through the Bible courses, over 25 lessons have been taught and over 45 assemblies have been presented plus so much more! The diary for next term is filling up fast and we are looking forward to all the events we have booked in!

We hope you have a lovely Easter.

This week our BOLT clubs are coming to an end. We have our last week where we round up all that we’ve learnt and then have some fun with plenty of games!

We are also visiting Year 1 at Vale delivering three lessons on Creation. This lesson uses Godly Play to help the children discover the story of Creation.

Phil will be finishing the OT Mini course at Notre Dame too, they’ve been a fantastic group!

Our annual Tower Building Competition has commenced in senior lunch clubs. The students are given a newspaper and some sellotape and they have to build the highest free standing tower possible! The tower has to hold a Cadbury’s Cream Egg and the height is measured to wherever the egg sits! So far, we have had one successful tower reaching the height of 46cm – we will see if students in other clubs can beat this!

We will be visiting La Mare High this week to deliver a newly developed lesson titled ‘What is Christian Marriage?’ We will be exploring what students think about marriage and what is included in a marriage service held in a church, particularly looking at the vows and commitments the couple make to one another. The first of these sessions was a huge success. Phil decided to act out the service with the Year 11 students and great fun was had by all… we did tell the students that whilst Phil is a licensed minister that the wedding was not legal!!! See the pictures below of the “happy couple”.

The team will also deliver the ‘Making Good Choices’ assembly at Blanchelande.

Don’t forget there is still time to sign up for our ‘Old Testament in a Nutshell’ training day on Saturday 6th April! See picture below for more details!

We had a fantastic lesson with Year 2 at La Houguette last week. We were looking at the question “Was Jesus Friends with Everyone?” We first looked at what qualities the children thought made a good friend. Suggestions included; loyal, kind, helpful, caring, honest and fun. Followed by splitting into groups to hear the story of when Jesus chose his disciples. We looked at their backgrounds, what jobs they were and did an activity labelling who was a fisherman, a trader or speaker.

We then moved on to hear the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. The children discussed what kind of a friend Jesus was and how much he cared for this family. They finished with a colouring activity of the house of Mary and Martha. Enjoy the brilliant photos below!

This week we’ll be completing our round of primary assemblies for this term, visiting St Martins, Forest, Beechwood and St Mary and St Michael. We will also be going back to La Houguette to deliver a lesson to Year 4, looking at forgiveness and Peter.

Phil will be completing three courses of OT Mini this week at St Martins, La Houguette and Melrose. Notre Dame continues into Week 4.

Lisa and Phil will be visiting La Mare High and Elizabeth College to deliver an assembly on the importance of making good choices. We draw upon Frodo’s struggle in Lord of the Rings film where he questions his purpose of destroying the ring… Gandalf offers some advice in this time of hardship that we all face difficult circumstances but ‘all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us’. The choices we make affect the person we become and the Bible teaches that we should ‘hate what is wrong and hold tightly to what is good’ Romans 12:9b. We encourage the students to make the most of the opportunities that come their way and to make good choices.

In senior lunch clubs we are exploring the Easter story, finding out what the students know about this event and asking them ‘what they find hard to believe about this story?’ Please pray for us as we discuss this story and explain its significance for Christians today.  

This week we’ll be visiting Hautes Capelles, Vale, Amherst, La Mare, Melrose and Vauvert to continue our Lent assembly. So far these have been going really well, the game is definitely a highlight!

BOLT clubs are on Week 8, looking at “Jesus Died For Us”. We’re really enjoying getting to know the children and seeing them each week. It’s always great to walk into the school and the children are eagerly waiting for us!

We will be delivering a lesson to Year 2 at La Houguette looking at “Jesus as a Friend”. We will be looking at the key questions: “Was it always easy for Jesus to show friendship? Was Jesus friends with everyone?” We’re really looking forward to this lesson, please pray that it goes well and that the children enjoy it!

This week in senior lunch clubs we are exploring the importance of perseverance when taking on new and difficult challenges. We look at the life of Jonah and how he chose to run away from his task but actually in running away that caused more problems for him. Christians believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each person and although it may not always be easy it often turns out to be the most fulfilling and exciting!

Our visits to Trinity Church continue with two more classes from La Mare coming along to find out how the local church can have an impact on the community. Sue Le Friec from Guernsey Welfare explained what the charity does and how it supports people all over Guernsey. See the pictures below of the students visit last week.

This week we will be visiting Notre Dame, Acorn House, Amherst and Blanchelande to continue with our Lent assembly.

Our BOLT clubs are starting to look at Jesus with the theme “Jesus Came To Do Good”. After a quick talk about who Jesus was and what he did, we ask the children what they know about Jesus. They may have heard about different miracles, or parables or they may have some questions like “How did Jesus walk on the water?”

Last week Bishop Darlington from Kagera in Tanzania, who was over with Dr Sue Wilson and Tumaini, came with us to a few of our assemblies and lessons to watch what we do in schools. During one visit at Vale Infants, we were told that Year 2 have just started learning about Africa. After Phil mentioned that he lived in Kenya for a while, the teacher of Year 2 jumped at the chance of asking if Phil would like to deliver a lesson for them! He will be going in this week to do that, which is great. Although not “RE” it is a step forward to them involving us more in their curriculum.

Our OT Mini courses will be going into Week 2 at Notre Dame and Week 3 at Melrose and La Houguette.

In senior lunch clubs we are discussing the question ‘Is it risky to be a Christian?’ – we explore different characters in the Bible who experienced persecution and discrimination. We also discuss if persecution of Christians still happens today and draw upon recent research from the charity Open Doors who do an amazing work helping Christians around the world who don’t have the freedom to practice their faith openly. Find out more here: https://www.opendoorsuk.org/persecution/

This week we are leading a set of sessions for La Mare High Year 10 students on the Church and how it impacts its local community. Rather than taking the lessons at school, we have organised for the students to visit Trinity Church and see hands on how the local church is working in its community. They will hear about different ministries the church is involved in and the reason the church feels it’s important to help other people.

We have also had the pleasure of hanging out with Keith Mallett, a board game enthusiast who has been in Guernsey for just under a week. He has been visiting schools and church youth clubs and sharing his testimony with students as well as teaching them about his board games.

We have now started our second assembly in primary schools, looking at Lent and how it is a time for Christians to have a “spring clean” of themselves and change any behaviors, or habits and improve themselves. To begin our assembly, we have a competition where two teams have 30 seconds to run to the middle, pick up one piece of rubbish, run back and but it in their bin then tag their team mate who does the same. The winner is the team that has the most at the end! We also watch a video clip from Lego Batman and talk about how it’s not only super villains who make bad choices, maybe the things we do aren’t quite as extreme but there are things that we could change about ourselves. We encourage the children to think of things that we all do that we could “throw away” and write them on bits of paper then actually throw them in a bin. So far common suggestions have been; bullying, not listening, swearing, retaliating, ignoring people and being rude.

Our OT Mini courses move into Week 2, with another one starting at Notre Dame. They do the course every two years with Year 5 and 6 so there is about 70 students for that lesson! Please pray that they engage with the stories and enjoy the session! Our BOLT clubs are looking at prayer this week, with an opportunity for the children to write a prayer of their own if they would like to.

This week in senior lunch clubs we are exploring the significance of the Bible as one big story. We look at passages in the book of Isaiah which talk about future events particularly in relation to the coming of Jesus. The Old Testament and New Testament are very much linked together and Isaiah is just one example of where we see this occur. The Old Testament is key to helping us understand the events written in the New Testament.

The final session at Ladies College on the Christian views on War was great and the students engaged well with the activities. Please see the pictures below of some of the comments students made about the lesson.

After a lovely half term break, we’re back refreshed for the rest of the term!

This week in primary schools, we’ll be visiting Amherst, Hautes Capelles and Vauvert for assemblies. Our BOLT clubs are on Week 5, looking at “God Speaks to Us Through the Bible”.

We will also be completing two courses of OT Mini at Vale as well as starting another four at St Martins, Melrose and La Houguette!

In our senior lunch clubs we are exploring the character of Gideon and discussing what characteristics make a good hero. Gideon was an unexpected hero, even when he doubted his abilities God still pursued him because God knew all that he was capable of doing. When we doubt ourselves and our capabilities Gideon reminds us that we all have the ability to be a hero!  

The Year 9 Le Murier students put on an excellent assembly, the performance ran smoothly and everyone played their part brilliantly. We have really enjoyed this experience and we will visit the school for the final session this week to talk about how the assembly went and to write up the paperwork for their ASDAN qualification.

We will also visit Ladies College for the final Year 9 session on the Christian views on War.

We’ve had two primary assemblies this week, at Notre Dame and St Martins. Our BOLT clubs continue, now into Week 4, looking at “God Made Us Special”.

Two OT Mini courses have now been completed, at Hautes Capelles and Forest. Their performance assemblies will be at the end of this week, please pray that these go well!

This week is performance week at Le Murier, they will be leading an assembly they have put together on the story of Jesus calming the storm. It has been great to work with the students over the last 5 weeks and help them to prepare their presentation. They will lead the assembly for year 7 and 8 students. We can’t wait to see the final performance!

In senior lunch clubs we are exploring the character of Joshua. Joshua had to follow in Moses footsteps, it probably seemed a rather scary task but he decided to go for it and he was able to lead the Israelites into the promised land. Following on from last week where we looked at what can hold us back we will explore the importance of pursuing new tasks even if it’s daunting.