Spiritual News

I greet you all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

As I write this Easter Message, I pray that it will be a great pondering challenge for you and your families as you spend this time together. As we reenact the passion of Christ this Easter, I pray that will be born anew in his death and resurrection.

It’s that time again, what do we give up for lent? Not always an easy question. Some of us make it hard for ourselves and give up a lot and others tend to not really stretch the boundaries too far. Anyway Lent is the forty days before Easter that we give something up or take something on to show our love and commitment to God.

Last year we introduced the ‘Keys Camp’, as part of our new Leadership Programme at St Peter’s Girls Prep.  The camp is scheduled to take place early in the year, in order to allow the Grade 7s an opportunity to create strong bonds amongst themselves and their teachers. This is also a time in which to set out clear expectations for the final year of prep school and prepare the girls for high school.

The countdown to Shrove Tuesday, or pancake Tuesday as most of us know it, has ended and this signals the beginning of the journey towards Easter. I’m still recovering from Christmas and trying to implement all those New Year’s resolutions I decided on. I’m not ready for Easter, but I have to be because time zooms on.

St Peter’s Prep Schools held a Year of the Woman event on Thursday, 3 August 2017 - as a culmination of the Diversity Committee’s dedication of 2017, to women.  A plaque was unveiled, in the Chapel, and blessed to mark the celebration of women’s accomplishments.  An explanation of the inscription, on the plaque, was given: ‘Wathinta Abafazi, Wathintha Imbokodo’ – translated, this means, ‘You strike a woman, you strike a rock.’

On Friday 23 June, our school celebrated St Peter’s Day. Both the Girls and Boys Prep Schools held Eucharist services. We were honoured to welcome Bishop Steve Moreo to the services and he enthralled the girls and boys with his sermon and thought provoking message.

On Monday morning, we began our palm “Sunday” service with the blessing of our palm branches outside. We then processed into the church and remembered the excitement in the air when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Often when asked, “Where do you go to school?” we simply answer, “St Peter’s”. So most people would think, “Oh, a private school” but is it only that? No, St Peter’s is proud to say we are a Christian school which also really does not tell the whole story because we are a church school and part of the Anglican Diocese.

The government recently calculated the cost of raising child from birth to 18 and came up with R4 007 520-00 for a middle income family with private schooling. Talk about a shock. That doesn’t even touch university tuition.

Anybody can pick up a phone or a tablet these days and google ‘Easter’ to get the latest and greatest up-to-date trends and info. So to bore you with the facts that are already at your fingertips is a waste. You can find the meaning and a blow-by-blow description of each moment of the Easter Story on the net. Some of it is a morbid fascination to find out how gruesome the facts actually are or how it was possible that one man endured so much.

A dignified and moving ceremony was held in the school Chapel on Friday, 12 February 2016, to mark the start of Darrel Webb’s career as Headmaster of St Peter’s Girls School.

Bishop Steve Moreo presided over the ceremony as Darrel was ‘installed’ into his rightful place in the Chapel. Bishop Steve blessed the Webb family and asked for God’s guidance and wisdom for Darrel in his role as leader of the school. Present at the service were members of Darrel’s family, Heads from various nearby schools, members of the St Peter’s Council and PA, St Peter’s staff and girls from Grade 3 – 7.