It’s great to be back at full capacity again with Emma’s return from a month of travelling! Welcome back Emma!

This week we only have one primary assembly with Vale Infants but our Walk Through the Bible courses continue. Sarah and Sian will be completing their course tomorrow with their final session at Forest.

BOLT clubs continue with more children attending each group, we’re looking at God’s love this week. So far the children’s questions, comments and enthusiasm have all made the half hour we spend with them very enjoyable. It’s so great to be able to get to know the children more each week.

The sessions on War at Ladies College were well received and as the students engaged with the activities they had some very interesting insights and thoughts to offer.

This week we will visit Elizabeth College for a set of assemblies on creativity. For Christians God is a creative being and we can see that in the creation of the world. When God made people in his image he made us with the ability to be creative.  Humans have done some incredible things and achieved some remarkable feats. Yet our identity is even bigger than the things we do! As Christians we believe we are ‘made in the image of God’ – and because of this we are of ultimate worth and significance – above and beyond our achievements.

In senior lunch clubs we are exploring what people are afraid of in life. Drawing upon the life of Moses we encourage the students they are not alone in facing things they are scared or worried about. Moses had a big challenge to overcome when he had to return to Egypt but God promises to be with him all the way. Moses also has Aaron to help him through the trials and challenges and we have people around us to help us when we are afraid. We never have to feel like we are on our own.

Another busy week for us! We have primary assemblies at Castel, Melrose, La Mare, Beechwood and Vauvert. We had to delay a couple of assemblies last week because of illness. Please continue to pray for strength and health for our team!

The OT Mini courses continue, all at different stages, but all going very well! We have at least one lesson every day of the week which is great and keeps us busy!

BOLT clubs started well last week with enthusiasm, excitement and some very interesting discussions.  We are hoping for some more attendance this week as news of the clubs spread. Some of the schools have accommodated us by moving other lunch clubs to ensure the children that want to attend BOLT club do not miss out. We’re very thankful for our wonderful volunteers who are helping us run these clubs.

Last week’s lessons at St Sampsons High were a huge success, the students engaged well with the content and asked some extremely thought provoking questions such as: ‘Why did God put the tree in the garden?’ ‘If God knew we were going to fail, why did he bother to create us in the first place?’ ‘Why did God not stop WW2?’ – These questions have no easy answers and it was a real privilege (and a challenge) to discuss these deep and profound questions with the students.

This week we are visiting Ladies College to deliver a set of lessons on the Christian views on War to Year 9. The lesson focuses on the Just War Theory and Pacifism. We will also discuss what the Bible teaches about the sanctity of life and the importance of justice. We have no doubt that these sessions will lead to lots of questions with no simple answers, please pray for us as we get ready to deliver these lessons!

In senior lunch clubs, we are exploring the theme of sacrifice and drawing upon the life of Abraham as an example of what it means to be obedient to God.

We will also be delivering an assembly at Ladies College on the theme: “Strong people don’t put others down, they build them up.” We look at the life of Jesus as an example of how he equipped and transformed people into becoming the best version of themselves.

Our first primary assembly of the term starts this week. We will be visiting Hautes Capelles, Acorn House, Forest, Beechwood and Vauvert. Our assembly looks at the story of Zacchaeus. Using an interactive story and a “snip & tell” recap we encourage the children that even though Zacchaeus was an unpopular person, Jesus was different. He welcomed him, cared for him and spent time with him! We are all precious to God and we should look out for other people and care for them as Jesus cared for Zacchaeus.

Our OT mini courses continue in various schools, they are all going really well and we continue to enjoy them too! Our new BOLT clubs start this week too at Forest, St Martins, Notre Dame and Beechwood.  This week we’re looking at “God is awesome” and introducing the children to what we will be looking at over the next 10 weeks.

This week we have the opportunity to lead six year 7 sessions at St Sampsons High on the Christian views on evil and suffering. The main focus of the lesson is to look at how God can exist in a world where there is so much bad. The central part of the session is to help students understand the importance of Free Will. We have the wonderful Nicole Le Goupillot, from Delancey Elim Church assisting us in delivering these lessons.

It is our third week at Le Murier and the parts have now been allocated so we will be working with the students to develop their individual roles for their assembly.

In senior lunch clubs we are exploring the question: ‘Is it ever OK to be angry?’ The session gets students to think about different situations they might find themselves in ranging from, ‘the internet stops working’ to ‘your best friend is being bullied’ and how they would respond. Drawing from the stories of Cain and Abel and Jesus cleansing the Temple we discuss the question: ‘Can anger can ever be used for good?’

Finally, we thought we’d share some pictures of our Reflective Spaces with you. Last week, we spent 3 days at St Martins School guiding around 400 children in Years 2 – 6 around multiple prayer stations. These were:

Light Lillies – letting go of our worries.
Thankful Ribbons – what are you thankful for?
Sorry Slates – God always forgives us when we say sorry.
Fingerprints – We are all special and unique, precious to God.
Quiet Area – a space to pray or reflect.
Thankful Playdoh – can you make something that you are thankful for?
Question Wall – what do you want to ask God?

We had a fantastic time and the children were all wonderful. A big thank you to all our volunteers, those who cut out lillies and those that gave up part or all of their day to help us!

Enjoy these photos!

We’re having a very busy week, spending 3 days at St Martins Primary for their Reflective Spaces. So far it has gone really well, please pray for the next two days, that the children will enjoy it and learn more about God and prayer.

On Monday, Sarah and Phil started another OT Mini course with a Year 5 class at St Martins and Sarah and Sian have just done their second week at Forest. Phil has also started two back to back courses at Vale and Capelles and another at Beechwood! It certainly is very busy but that is great! This makes a total of 8 courses being taught in the week!

The overall topic for senior lunch clubs this term is characters from the Bible. This week the series starts by looking at Adam and Eve and exploring the importance of choice and what influences us when we make decisions.

Last week at Le Murier we introduced the story of ‘Jesus calming the storm’ (Mark 4:35-41) followed by a great discussion with the students as we explored what the narrative teaches. This will be the foundation for the assembly they will create over the next few weeks. This week we will start to think about how we can deliver the story and which parts the students will play.

A very Happy New Year to you all.

This term we have hit the ground running with many different activities starting straight away. One of the exciting opportunities is helping a group of students at Le Murier School with their ASDAN qualification. We will spend the next 5 weeks helping them to develop an assembly based on a Bible story which they will then present to their peers. We are thrilled to have been asked for the third time to come and help the students with this project.

We are also looking forward to catching up with the students after the Christmas break in our senior lunch clubs. These weekly groups allow students the chance to play games and chat in a fun and relaxed setting and it is a real blessing to be part of their school week!

Sarah and Sian started their OT Mini course at Forest and Phil started another one at St Martins! Our term is full of these courses, with multiple lessons going on each week so we’d really appreciate your prayers!

We’re looking forward to the year ahead and excited for the opportunities that God will give us to develop our work.

Last week we visited Melrose, Castel and Notre Dame to deliver lessons on the Christmas Story. This was a lesson for Year 3.

We started off the lesson asking the question, “Has Christmas Lost It’s True Meaning?” This was the overall question of the lesson and we would come back to it at the end.

The children came up with lots of answers to what Christmas meant to them and we made a list. These included; the birth of Jesus, decorations, snow, family time, presents, games, fun, happiness and many many more!

Phil then told the Christmas story using Godly Play. The children were all mesmerized by each character and listened very carefully, answering all the questions afterwards.

In one school we had time to tell the story of Papa Panov. We then split into small groups and used the technique of hot seating, where a child became a character from the story and answered questions.

Finally we finished by making a little booklet of the Christmas story. The children loved doing this and there were some great booklets made!

We hope you have a lovely Christmas!!

We’re nearly at the end of term! Our primary school work has slowed down this week with only a few lessons to take. Today we visited Year 3 at Notre Dame where 42 children looked at the question “Has Christmas lost it’s true meaning.” We used Godly Play, craft and discussion to remind ourselves what the real reason of Christmas is: Jesus! The children were fantastic and asked some great questions and had some very thought provoking comments. We will do a more in-depth post about these lessons soon with pictures!

We will also be taking this lesson to Melrose this week. We had to postpone it as Phil was stuck in Alderney at the end of last week! Please pray that this runs smoothly and the children enjoy the session.

Phil and Sarah have been to Le Rondin and Forest’s Christmas productions, both were fantastic and it was so lovely to be invited! We will also be attending the infant and junior productions at Notre Dame.

This week in senior lunch clubs it is Christmas party week. A chance to have fun, play silly games and eat yummy food with the students. This year we challenge the students to make a Christmas themed display out of marshmallows and chocolate matchmakers, so far we have had a snowman warming himself by the fire and a beautiful nativity complete with very fluffy sheep!

We will also visit La Mare High to deliver our Advent themed assembly exploring the Nativity Story and take the final prejudice and discrimination lesson for this term.

Please pray for us as we approach the end of term and also for the teachers and students of our schools!

We’re starting to wind down a little now as we approach the last few weeks of term and Christmas! Our BOLT clubs are in their last week, ending on Party Week with games and silliness! After spending time with the children for 10 weeks, it’s sad for us and them to leave but we’ve had great fun.

Our Christmas lessons are starting this week with one at Melrose. We’re really looking forward to this and exploring the Christmas story with the children.

In senior lunch clubs we are exploring the Nativity, quizzing them on the story to find out what they know. We also challenge them to see if they can tell the Bible story in 30 seconds, so far we have had some very interesting versions of the Christmas story. This week the Advent assembly was delivered at Blanchelande College and Ladies College.

Now that we’re in December, we’re really privileged to have been invited to attend some of our schools Christmas productions. These are always great and it’s so lovely to have been invited! We have La Mare and Blanchelande this week.

This week BOLT clubs are on their last teaching week, looking at “We Can Be Friends With God”. We round up what we’ve learnt over the last 10 weeks:

“Over the past 10 weeks we have taught you lots of things about God, how He created the world, how He loves us, and made us special, how He speaks to us, and wants us to pray to Him. Why did God do all these things? Because He wants a friendship with us. Throughout the Bible, the people didn’t always listen to or want to know God. By sending Jesus He showed how important we, humans, are to Him. The Bible says God wants nothing in return other than our belief in Him. People get closer to God by doing different things. By reading the Bible to understand more about Him. By praying, as then God can help us to know what is best for our lives. By going to church so that they can sing and tell God what they think of Him. Just like we spend time with our friends, God wants us to spend time with Him. Do these things make us perfect people? No – we all do things that are wrong, and make mistakes. But really all these things do is help us to be closer to a God who wants to be our friend.”

We have assemblies with Amherst this week, both infants and juniors, Blanchelande and Vauvert. Phil and Kate Hatton will also be delivering their 4th OT Mini session at St Martins with Year 6.

The season of Advent starts this weekend, so we are leading a number of senior assemblies over the next few weeks based on preparing for Christmas. This week we are at Elizabeth College. We look at different activities we have to prepare for, including Christmas and then talk about how Advent is a time to stop in amongst all the busyness and remember what Christmas is all about. The true reason for this wonderful season which is Jesus coming to earth.

In senior lunch clubs we are looking at the importance of forgiveness. Exploring what makes it difficult to forgive others and how sometimes we all need to be forgiven. Looking at how Jesus taught us to forgive those who have “wronged” us just as sometimes we need forgiveness too.

We will also be leading two sessions at La Mare on the Christian views on Prejudice and Discrimination.

“Pray Day is the third Tuesday of November every year when schools across Europe and around the world are the focus of prayer.”

This week we have been reminded about the importance of praying for our local schools as national Pray Day for Schools took place. We thought we would update you on all of the schools that we visit on a regular basis. The activities we deliver in these schools range from assemblies, lessons and lunch clubs. We feel very privileged to be able to serve the schools in these areas. Below are the schools we visit and some prayer points to help guide your prayers:

Primary:

Acorn House
Amherst
Beechwood
Blanchelande
Castel
Forest
Hautes Capelles
La Houguette
La Mare
Le Rondin
Melrose
Notre Dame
St Martins
St Mary and St Michael’s
Vale
Vauvert

Secondary

Blanchelande College
Elizabeth College
Grammar
Ladies College
Le Murier
Les Beaucamps High
La Mare High
St Sampsons High

Prayer Points:

• For new opportunities in all schools.
• For new relationships with staff and students.
• For friendships among the students, especially in secondary schools.
• For the States as they decide on changes in schools across Guernsey.

As ever thank you for your support!

Find out more info on Pray For Schools here:

Pray Day for Schools