We’ve made it to half term! After a busy few weeks and the team coming down with the usual coughs and colds we are pleased to be able to take a break, visit family and rest up before the even busier second half of term and Christmas!

In the last two weeks we have visited Year 1s at Castel, Hautes Capelles, St Mary and St Michaels and Notre Dame for our Creation lesson. We love spending time with the Year 1s and hearing how we should take care of the wonderful world that God created for us! We also get to see some lovely crestions that they make out of Play-doh. We’ve seen waves, mountains, volcanos, butterflies, chocolate pizzas and cakes piled high with toppings!

Phil and Victoria also led the second lesson looking at Parables for Year 3 at Hautes Capelles where they looked at The Lost Coin, The Lost Sheep and The Lost Son stories. 

This week also marked the end of the two OT Mini courses at La Rondin and St Mary and St Michaels, both having been fantastic and thoroughly enjoyed by the children. One child from La Rondin told Phil; “Monday afternoons are my favourite part of school now!” It’s a shame we couldn’t spend longer with these groups but we look forward to moving on to other schools after half term and starting the courses again! 

Finally we finished the half term with our Quiet Morning. This time with Sian Street at Forest Methodist. Our focus was on Mark 10:46-52, the story of Bartimaeus and the question Jesus asked “What can I do for you?” As always these are so valuable for the team, a chance for us to stop and receive teaching for ourselves. Thank you Sian!

This week started with a New Beginnings assembly at La Mare de Carteret High with Phil and Lisa which went really well.

On Tuesday Phil, Victoria and Sian Street led a Creation lesson with Year 1s at Forest. It’s a very fun lesson enjoyed by the children and leaders! Phil also led a lesson on The Bible at Hautes Capelles for their Year 3s as they begin to look at this in RE. Next week Phil will continue this with a lesson on Parables. These have become a yearly booking and we love that we get asked back! 

We also all attended a Zoom training course for Christmas in a Box to make sure we are well prepared for when we launch it in schools in November. It is a great initiative and we can’t wait to get started.

Our primary assemblies have been continuing this week at Beechwood, St Mary and St Michael’s and Blanchelande. The children have responded really well with the poem and seem to enjoy the interaction!

This morning Lisa and Victoria led our Harvest assembly at Le Murier which included an activity to reflect on what the students are thankful for. They were able to write this down at the end of the assembly.

Please continue to pray for the team especially as they fight through the normal September/October coughs and colds! Pray for health and energy! Thank you!

   Over the last few days we have launched our Harvest primary assembly for this half of the term. So far we’ve visited Vale, Vauvert and Notre Dame. The children have responded well and teachers have commented on how fitting it is with what they’re doing.
   The assembly starts with a bit of fun, one of us starts eating some toast because we didn’t have time before the assembly. The other presenter then asks them to say thank you for their food and after saying thank you to the children and presenter we explain that they should say thank you to God because God was there at the very beginning of when the seed was sown in the field. We then go on to tell this with a poem in the tune of the nursery rhyme The House that Jack Built. We introduce the seed, corn, farmer, miller, baker, shopkeeper and parent all who played a vital role in the production of the toast! We are very busy next week with a lot of these assemblies so please keep us in your prayers that they go well! 

Lunch clubs have started back again including BOLT clubs at Blanchelande, Vale and Amherst and St Mary and St Michael’s and La Houguette starting next week. These have started well with great attendance and some amazing questions about God, Jesus and what Christians believe. In our secondary clubs, we’ve seen a return of students from last year which is brilliant.

OT Mini has also started with a course at La Rondin with Phil, Eleanor and Frances. St Mary and St Michael’s started this week with Phil and Sarah presenting. Bookings are coming in fast for these courses and other lessons both in primary and secondary schools which we’re really pleased about!

We are back! Back to booking, back to planning, back to visiting the students of Guernsey and delivering assemblies, lunch clubs, prayer spaces and exciting lessons!

We’re hoping and praying for an uninterrupted term and have spent some time looking at our goals. A great way for us to start the term was to look at what went well last year and what we’d like to achieve this year. For example we’d love to teach our OT Mini sessions in EVERY primary school this year (interrupted last year because of lockdown!)

As a team we are also very excited for some new opportunities coming our way. We will be starting our new Christmas In A Box lessons this year. If you haven’t heard of it yet, watch this video! Tomorrow we have our Volunteer Morning where we will be looking at this more!

Today ends the summer term and the school year, which means the summer begins and it’s great that we have such wonderful weather for it. 

Yesterday we ended our term with a Quiet Morning, hosted by Rev’d Peter Graysmith. We spent the morning reflecting together on our place in schools and how what we do isn’t planting the seeds (Matthew 13) as the Holy Spirit does that, but we are preparing the soil, looking after the soil, laying the foundations so that God can work in the lives of the children and they can remember those times when a group of Christians taught them that story or listened to them when they were struggling and spent time getting to know them. We had wonderful views and even spent time planting our own geraniums! It was a great end to the term.

Please also see below our newsletter for this term! Thank you for all of your support and prayers during this past year. We pray that you all have a lovely summer with your friends and family! 

PACE SUMMER NEWSLETTER

As you may know during the last few weeks of the summer term Lisa and Phil visit each primary school and deliver our Transition Lesson to every Year 6 pupil in Guernsey.  This week we visited Hautes Capelles, Castel and Amherst. These sessions have been great and very well received by all. We also give out a “It’s Your Move” booklet to each child which is donated by the school’s local churches. Thank you!

We’d also like to highlight our upcoming September volunteer morning that will be focussing mainly on our new project, Christmas in a Box but will also be a refresher for our volunteers and a “thank you” to everyone who contributes to our work. Please see this poster for details and put it in your diary! 

On Tuesday 29th we celebrated our 30 years of schools work with a celebration BBQ and AGM! We had a great evening filled with memories and being thankful for all that PACE has achieved. 

Our theme for the night was; Past, Present, Future. We interviewed three of our past colleagues, looked at what we have done in the past year and introduced some exciting new projects for the future.

Thank you to everyone who came, donated, supported and served, making the evening a huge success!

Finally our amazing Victoria made a wonderful video using our history timeline. It’s too good not to watch so please enjoy!

In the past week we held Prayer Spaces at La Mare Primary schools for Years 1-5. We spent three days with them and had a great time! All the children were enthusiastic, engaged and loved the space! The stations we had this year were Thankful Gift Tags, Being Brave, Seeds of Hope, Calm Jars, Helping Hands and Friendship Chains. There were some really emotional and deep thoughts that surfaced from the children, particularly on the Being Brave station. Below are some pictures from the event. Thank you to our amazing volunteers who joined us to bring this time to the children of La Mare. 

We have also been delivering some more Transition Lessons for Year 6s at Notre Dame, St Martins, Beechwood, La Rondin and La Mare. A busy week! Thank you to the churches who have funded the booklets that we give to each student.

Finally we have our 30th Anniversary Celebration and AGM this Tuesday! We would love to see you there with us! Please do let us know if you are coming so we have enough food for the BBQ!!