Dear Families and Friends,

As I sat in Mass on Sunday listening to Fr.Solomon read the weekly Gospel it struck me at what a great narrative had been crafted by the early followers of Jesus.  In case you wondered, the chosen weekly readings are not randomly selected from the bible by the priest but actually shaped to form a repeated three year cycle that is common across all Catholic churches across the globe.  Our recent stories retell of the events that took place after Easter Sunday, in fact the Church is still in the season of Easter (long after my chocolate eggs have disappeared). 

• We have listened to the fear of the disciples as they tried to make sense of Easter Sunday,
• We have heard Jesus promise to send the disciples a helper as well as declare to them that he is like a shepherd, keeping watch over them
• We have read of Jesus departing this world for heaven
• While this weekend we have the excitement of the Pentecost where the disciples are given the gift of the Holy Spirit and then go out to all the nations to spread the Good News.  

To deliberately coincide with this we have our Year 6 Confirmation Candidates receiving the Gift of Holy Spirit next Friday - Their own Pentecost experience.  Last weekend at Lumen Christi our parish community celebrated the baptism of Anouk, the sister of Sanne (Yr.3) and Nils (Prep). It was such a special moment for me to reflect on the fact that here we were in Churchill 2000 years later repeating the actions of these early followers of Jesus.  Congratulations to Anouk!

Last week I mentioned through the school's social media that we had a number of families who appear to have not accessed their schoolzine account recently - so would not be accessing newsletters (or be reading this!).  We have opened the Parent Teacher Interview booking system so parents will need to access their schoolzine accounts to do this.  We are also about to implement the SIMON system which will provide an overarching online platform to manage attendance, permission notes, reporting, communication, assessment and many other adminstrative features.  The SIMON system has a parent portal called PAM and is the system that Lavalla use so it will be familiar to those families.  We will be providing information to families about how to go about registering in this system.

This week we finalised the recruitment process for our Admin Officer vacancy.  We hope to introduce the new staff member soon but in the meantime we thank Mrs.Wilson and others who have helped out at reception.

Have a great week, Dave

Please take note of these dates for your family calendar

Friday 28th May: Confirmation Mass 5pm

Wed 2nd & Thur 3rd June: Parent-Teacher Interviews.  Bookings via the website or on the App

Mon 14th June: Public Holiday

Friday 25th June: End of Term (12.30pm finish)

Sports Dates

Soccer

Division day Wed 26th May @ Traralgon

Football/Netball

19th May District

Please click on the link to make a booking: TERM 2 PARENT-TEACHER INTERVIEWS

Today in the Lumen Christi library we joined with schools from across the country for National Simultaneous Storytime.  This event is held annually by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA). Every year a picture book, written and illustrated by an Australian author and illustrator, is read simultaneously in libraries, schools, pre-schools, childcare centres, family homes, bookshops and many other places around the country. Now in its 21st successful year, it is a colourful, vibrant, fun event that aims to promote the value of reading and literacy, using an Australian children's book that explores age-appropriate themes, and addresses key learning areas of the National Curriculum for Foundation to Year 6.

This year ALIA along with Scholastic, the Australian Space Agency and the Office of the Chief Scientist joined us for an intergalactic experience with the NSS 2021 book being read by the astronaut Dr Shannon Walker from the International Space Station.   The 2021 chosen book was Give Me Some Space written and illustrated by Philip Bunting.

A recording of the presentation can be found at:

The Victorian Government Legislative Council’s Economy and Infrastructure Committee is considering extending school buses for use by the wider public to enhance the mobility of regional and rural Victorians. In particular, the Committee will consider [1] identifying the spare capacity of existing assets in the school bus program and how that might be used to enhance public transport options in regional and rural Victoria; and [2] investigating the costs of extending mainstream school buses to the general public and how a fare system would function.

Submissions are being sought from the wider public. Submissions are due by Friday 25 June 2021.

Details of this inquiry can be found via the link below:

https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/eic-lc/article/4615