Middle Years

Year 7 Spirituality Excursion

In Week 8, the Year 7 students visited different places of worship in the city as part of the Year 7 Christian Living unit on Spirituality. We visited the Russian Orthodox Church, St Francis Xavier Cathedral, The Austral Asian Christian Church and the Islamic Mosque. We are very thankful for the involvement of these organizations in our excursion. The Year 7’s were introduced to significant members who spoke to them about worship and the spiritual practices of their congregation. The students were given the task of comparing and contrasting the places of worship and were fascinated by the differences between them all. We would like to thank the Year 7 Core Teachers, Charlie Tatera and Alex Schmocker for being part of our excursion.

April Dunstan

Year 7 Core Teacher

Year 9 Retreat Afternoon

This term in Christian Living we have been learning about ourselves, what we believe in, and our relationship with God and each other. On Friday 14 September our Christian Living teachers organised a retreat afternoon.  During this time, we took part in two activities of our choosing. The activities on offer were: Bible and Tim Tams, identity (games), meditation, spiritual walk and mindful colouring.  Through these activities we were given the opportunity to learn more about Christianity, focus on ourselves and our personal journeys, and connect with our peers. We thoroughly enjoyed this afternoon and learnt a lot!

My experience (Grace)

I took part in the ‘identity’ activity.  This activity was run by one of our Christian Living teachers Mrs Visser. It started off with us watching parts of a video about the universe. Mrs Visser explained to us just how unfathomable it is that we are alive, and that the only explanation for how everything works is the existence of a creator, God. We then played a game where Mrs Visser read out 15 Bible verses which we had to remember. We were then separated into teams. In turn, each team member had to draw images relating to a Bible verse on the board. They were not allowed to speak. The rest of the team had to guess from their memory what the verse was. After a few rounds of this game, we swapped drawing for miming. The teams got really involved. By the end of the session most of us had memorised many of the Bible verses, which is excellent knowledge to have in the future.  The Bible verses were all about us, God’s love for us, and the fact that we are His creation and He knows every little detail about us.  From what I witnessed, the session was a huge hit amongst the Year 9 students, with all people getting actively involved.

My experience (Riley)

I selected the spiritual walk activity run by Mrs Slater. We started the session by sitting in a circle and talking about how God guides us ‘behind the scenes’. Mrs Slater explained that God guides us even when we’re not aware of it. He works in all things, moving us along the path He has planned. After the brief introduction our task was to form pairs or groups of 3.  In these groups we had to guide a person, with their eyes closed, through an obstacle course.  This involved hurdles, trees and jumping over cones. The task itself was very fun and there were lots of laughs. Some students found it a challenge to trust their friends, with some people even being directed into bushes and trees! After the obstacle course we returned to the circle to reflect on the task.  Many people said that they found it difficult to put their faith and trust in someone else’s hands; this resulted in them occasionally opening their eyes. Others mentioned that patience was needed; for example, the guide had to show patience due to how slow their partner was walking. The person being guided also needed patience due to the occasional bad instruction that was being given. I really enjoyed the spiritual walk and thought it gave us a great end to our day, especially as it was a little more active. I felt it really symbolised the need for us all to put our faith in people and God to see where we end up.

Concluding, myself and Grace really enjoyed the day and all activities we took part in.  We would like to thank our Christian Living teachers for giving us the opportunity to take part in a fun Friday afternoon.

Grace Gregurev and Riley Scarman

Year 9 Students