After the half term break, we were straight back to it with a Prayer Spaces running at Beechwood. We set up on Monday morning in their Library and spent Tuesday and Wednesday with the students from Year 3 – Year 6 exploring prayer and reflection. The stations we had were:

The children were all enthusiastic, responsive and lovely to spend time with. We’ve had some positive feedback including these from Year 3!

Thank you to our lovely volunteers who gave their time to come and help make this event possible. Also to our cutters who helped prepare what we needed!

The PACE team have been busy with the primary puppet assembly, senior assemblies and OTM lessons as well as planning for our upcoming 30th Celebration and AGM! 

Phil and Lisa lead assemblies on the importance of making the most of our time at Elizabeth College this week. We reflected on the past year with its many trials and challenges as we navigated lockdown and looked about how the Bible says that God has plans for us right where we are, right at this time. We encouraged the students to make most of the time they had left at school and then to enjoy the summer! 

Phil and Sarah completed the Forest OTM course last week and Tim and Dorcas finished their course at Castel yesterday which is fantastic! Eleanor, Phil, Sarah-Jane and Sarah will complete their courses at Blanchelande next week too along with Sarah and Claire finishing at St Mary and St Micheal’s. Amherst and Vauvert are both continuing well. We’re so thankful that we have been able to do so many courses this term. It’s been great to have our wider presenter team take these on so that Phil could launch the NTM course at La Houguette and Melrose. Here’s Phil in action earlier this week.

We would love to see you at our special 30th Anniversary Celebration on Tuesday 29th June at 6.30pm-9pm held at Shiloh. We will have a BBQ followed by a presentation of our Past, Present and Future!

Last week Victoria and Lisa led an assembly for the lower school at Ladies College. The assembly started with a challenge to see which of the two volunteers could eat as many Maltesers as they could using wooden spoons attached to long sticks. The point of the activity was to get the girls to work together and feed each other as it’s very difficult to feed yourself with a long stick. The theme of the assembly was the importance of working in a team and we explored Paul’s teaching on ‘one body with many members’ from 1 Corinthians 12. We concluded that during the pandemic we have had to be one team all playing our individual parts to combat the spread of the virus and whilst it hasn’t always been easy we have continued to play our part.  This week concluded our time at Le Murier school working with a group of Year 9’s on the creation of an assembly on the Good Samaritan. After all the planing and rehearsals the students performed their assembly to the lower school who thoroughly enjoyed it. As ever we have loved working with the students and seeing them put together an excellent assembly and want to say a big well done to them all. 

After the Easter break, we’re straight back to work with a busy few weeks ahead of us. Our term started on Monday with a Quiet Morning held by John and Frances Ogier at Spurgeon Baptist Church. We spent the morning reflecting on Jonah and thinking about things that we can hold onto, let go of and move into. We got creative with some beach items and made a picture out of shells, sand and sea glass and then visited Fermain where we finished with tea and cake! It was a great way to start the term. We also celebrated Phil’s birthday which was in the Easter holidays!

Phil and Lisa were back at Le Murier this week continuing their work with a group of Year 9 students who will be performing an assembly on the Good Samaritan as part of their ASDAN qualification. For this session we focused on how they were going to act out the story and it was great to see the students bring the characters to life. We are looking forward to seeing the students bring the assembly together and then perform it the lower school in 2 weeks time. 

Finally we are in full swing with OT Mini courses at Castel with Tim and Dorcas (2 courses), Blanchelande with Phil and Eleanor, Sarah and Sarah-Jane (2 courses) and St Mary and St Micheal’s with Sarah and Claire. Phil also launched NT Mini this week with courses at La Houguette and Melrose for Year 6! By the end of this term, 6,538 students will have completed our OT and NT Mini courses since 2008!

Please continue to pray for the team as we enter a busy term! 

This term has been different once again but it was great to spend the last two weeks visiting schools again. We managed to finish some OT Mini courses at Beechwood and La Houguette. Forest has two more weeks left which will be completed after the Easter break. We also got to deliver two assemblies at Amherst for their infants and juniors. Phil and Sarah looked at ‘Impossible Easter’ – using a quiz, some illustrations and videos to present how some things can sound impossible but actually be true! Including the resurrection of Jesus! We’re very grateful for the work we have achieved this term despite lockdown and look forward to the busy summer term!

As it’s the end of term, please have a read of our Spring Newsletter.

Finally we have our new video for our senior creation lessons! We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Thank you for all your support this term, we hope you have a very Happy Easter!

We’re very pleased to be getting back to ‘normal’ next week and resume our schools work! We have a few things booked in ready to go, particularly the courses we had to cut short in January. We will be finishing some OT Mini lessons and meeting together to plan for the summer term. 

The team have also started another study course together and we’re looking forward to some discussion, learning how we can develop our work and connect with students more. We are following a Christian course helping us to think more about identity and relationships called ‘Living in Love and Faith’.

Finally we have a new video! Victoria has been working hard again on this one and we’re excited to add it to our Creation lessons for Year 7. It’s not quite ready to post but when it is we will let you know!

Please continue to pray for the teachers and students of our local schools. 

With the great news of schools going back on Monday 8th March, we’re looking forward to also being able to continue our work, however we realise this may not be for a while yet. Please continue to pray for the children, teachers and staff as they prepare to go back on Monday. 

As we mentioned in our last post, Victoria did an amazing job of putting together a “virtual assembly”. We have now added a conclusion to the end along with some reflection questions and have sent it out to all the primary schools. So far we’ve had some great positive responses! Here is the full version! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slC2EhhXNOs&ab_channel=PACEGuernsey (please note this link may not work through the email preview so please visit the blog post).

Finally we’ve also taken part in some training sessions over Zoom. This was with Prayer Spaces in Schools, looking at how we can adapt events but still be able to run them with restrictions. We also shared our DIY Pack with them! The other training session we took part in was for an exciting resource called “Easter in a Box: The Movie” which looks very exciting and we will be looking into this more for perhaps Easter next year!

Hi supporters, 

It seems the video has not come through to some emails so to view please visit the blog post via the website:

https://paceguernsey.com/pace/pace-update-14/

Thank you!

Over the last few weeks, Victoria has been working hard on a video that we decided to make after not being able to complete our primary assemblies because of the current lockdown. Using the images we had found for the assembly and few added in she produced this amazing video – can you recognise the voiceover? We hope you love it like we do!

We will be sending this to our primary schools in the hope that they can use it either in schools or as part of their distance learning!

As part of our working from home, the team are using the time to read, spend time in prayer, listen to podcasts and attend online conferences. Before half term the team joined the Hand in Hand Conference 2021. This was the conference Sarah attended last year in Eastbourne. The content was brilliant with speakers looking at children’s and family ministry in a post-pandemic world; the presence of the Kingdom in the community and schools, How can we help the children and families we work with, and ourselves, cope with the impact of lockdowns and much more. One sessions looked at Prayer Spaces in lockdown and shared some new resources that we will be looking into.

We found the conference really helpful and it gave us a lot of ideas for new things to try or explore. It also gave us a bit of a boost, seeing all these organisations encouraging and helping each other during this strange time! You can find all the sessions from the conference here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyDqOLF9mFo0bumVUfX3khg

As always, thank you for your continued support, prayers and encouragement. We ask that you keep the schools of Guernsey; the teachers and students in your prayers too. Here is a reminder of our schools.

Firstly we hope you are all keeping safe during this second lockdown and have settled back to working from home. As a team we are meeting again on Zoom to check in with each other and discuss any work we can do at home. We have refreshed our DIY Prayer Space Pack for schools after some feedback during the last lockdown and Victoria has been busy creating some exciting resources to send to schools! 

The day before Guernsey went into lockdown, Phil, Sarah and Janet were at St Mary’s and St Michael’s reception class for their own mini Prayer Spaces lesson. In class they had been looking at the Feeding of the 5000 so we tailored some stations to bring out some aspects of the story. As a class we went through the story using Bob Hartman’s version and then explored being thankful for food by making Playdoh loaves and fishes, knowing Jesus listens to our worries using Worry Lillies and learning how we are all special and God cares for each one of us using Fingerprints! It was a little hectic as you can imagine but great fun! 

We ask that you join us in praying that our island situation improves and that schools can begin to open, especially for vulnerable and key worker children.