Caption: The Crew is being planned out by this group of Grade 12 students at PACA (Chloe Harper, Rafael Meikle, Larissa Anderson and Violet Smoak in the back. Sayuky Kaneco and Arthur Silva in the front.) [by Dr. Cristina Meier]
by Marianne Meikle
A few of the 2025 seniors are planning something new for the return of the “Crew” before bringing it back to its weekly meetings for this new school year. Instead of rushing to begin, they are waiting for the Lord to lead them toward how to begin the weekly meeting that used to happen on Fridays during lunch last year.
Crew is a student-led group that dedicated some of their Friday lunch last year to worship God. Violet Smoak was one of the students who helped start “Crew” at PACA last year. She said it was hard to start, because it was just her and her friends sitting at the bleachers worshiping God.
Over time, this activity turned into a weekly event and a common thing to see during lunchtime on Fridays at PACA. According to Smoak, they started “crew” because it was something God was leading them to do. They also wanted to genuinely praise the Lord and share his Word.
“This group brought a lot of good things to PACA but it definitely could’ve been better organized,” said Violet Smoak.
Although the Crew’s founding members are still hesitant to bring it back to its former activity level, they want to focus on praising God.
“It was never about numbers of people, we were just praising God and that’s what it’s about. If the whole school were there, it would have been the same thing if two people were there,” said senior Arthur Silva.
The people in this school highly appreciate having Crew on campus, according to the observations of Viviane Guedes, a Portuguese teacher at PACA.
“I think this is a difference to this school, a privilege to have, essential for edification and communion among students,” said Guedes.
“Better things are still to come.God is the ultimate teacher and we are all his students trying to learn better together,” says senior student, Rafael Meikle.
