RE Team Blog – 1

RE team Blog 1- February 2024

Hello! I'm going to be honest I've never actually written a blog before, so this is a bit of an experiment for me, I hope you'll be patient with me while I find my feet.

For those that don't already know me, I'm Aimee Roddam and I'm the RE Team (Schools work co-ordinator) I'm employed by Doncaster Methodist circuit to take the Gospel into the schools of Doncaster and give every student in Doncaster opportunity to encounter the love of Jesus Christ. It's a bold mission statement but God does challenge us to be Bold and by His grace I have been able to facilitate encounters with Christ for primary school students for the last 8 year. I'm incredibly passionate about my work and love being able to share it with others. Thats partly what has inspired this blog- I will be sharing monthly updates of the work I do in schools with my merry band of volunteers, as well as some reflections, encouragement and resources which I hope will inspire others to share in this bold mission.

January, for many, can be a very slow month which feels never ending. For me the last month has felt almost "blink and you'll miss it". With Open the Book assemblies, R.E. lessons in schools, Team visits, training, planning and networking it has been a month full of blessings. One of these blessings was a recent Prayer space in Schools training day I attended in Sheffield circuit. Prayer spaces in schools aims to provide a space within the school day for children to reflect on the world around them as well as individual struggles they may be encountering. It's a beautiful resource which, at the moment, Doncaster circuit provides to one school in Scawthorpe, but we do have the capacity and resources to provide more. The training Day was encouraging and has given me so many ideas that I'd like to try.

As I mentioned, I do provide a prayer space in one of the schools I regularly visit. Every Monday lunch time I set up a pop-up prayer space at Sunnyfields primary school, and todays prayer space (Monday 5th Feb) was all about friendship. One of the prayer activities was "friendship foundations" were the young people are presented with building blocks with characteristics of a good friend and are encouraged to choose their 5 most important. They can also add qualities to a blank block if they would like to. One young man took a blank block and wrote on it "Someone that will make you go up in life, not down". I thought this was such a beautiful and inciteful way to look at a friend and I was truly amazed by this answer. It also made me think of Jesus, of how he called his disciples, how he raised them up in life- from fishermen to fishers of men and how he then sent them out to do the same for others always calling people to "go up" in life in the strength of God the Father. It's little snippets like this that make me love being a school's worker and love schools and students.

4th -18th February is love our schools fortnight, an off shoot of Pray for Schools, when Christians are encouraged to join together and "love our schools" through prayers, blessings and practical things we can do for the schools. I will be joining in with Love our schools fortnight and if you would like to, the below image provides some suggestions of ways to do that.

I look forward to everything else that February has to offer and if there is any way I can support your church and mission with schools work please feel free to contact me via email re.team.doncaster@outlook.com

Aimee