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!!

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.