On Wednesday 29th November we worked with around 60 Year 6s from several of the smaller Primary Schools around Preston. The smallest school only had 3 members of Year 6! St Andrew’s Parish, Cottam hosted us all for the day.
We explored the Advent theme of staying awake with a particular focus on prayer. We started the day by joining the Parish for their morning Mass and for the rest of the morning we played games that helped us think about communicating with God, listened to the Word of God in the Bible and made posters to share what our small group’s Scripture passage taught us about God and who we are in His sight. After a packed lunch and a run around outside we split the group in half and experienced two other ways of praying. One group came into church with Ruth to think about using our bodies to worship the Lord. We thought about different ways we use our bodies in the Liturgy, different postures we might use for prayer and sang some worship songs using our bodies to accompany the words we were singing. The other group stayed in the Hall with Joe to focus on using our minds in prayer. After learning about St Ignatius and his encouragement to use our imaginations and all of our senses in prayer, we were led in a guided mediation based on the Nativity story. Once the groups had swapped around and experienced both ways of praying we rounded off the day by hearing from the young people what they had learned, what had touched them and what they would be taking away from the day. It is always a pleasure to work with the Small Schools Cluster, to see the young people interacting together and of course even better to hear how they have encountered God through the day.