April 1, 2019 was a very special day for the Tenby-based charity Amazing Grace Primary Schools.

It was the day when its fifth primary school was opened, at Chak 65 in Punjab, Pakistan.

But the day was extra special because as well as the school, the charity’s first orphanage was also opened, at the same premises.

Chairman John Lee, and another trustee of the charity Maqsood Bhatti, said that it was a leap of faith for them who, along with a third trustee, are now fully supporting five schools and an orphanage housing fifteen children.

AGPS was formed in 2018, when three local Christians got together to study the Bible in an informal way, and heard about the great need of Christian minority groups in Pakistan, who often live in their own segregated communities or rural villages.

Many men and women live in abject poverty, with their children having no education at all, and no future except to make mud bricks all day long, alongside their parents.

The object of the new charity was to provide these children with free education until they reached secondary school age, thus giving them a chance in life, to better themselves and hopefully to gain good jobs.

Maqsood said: “We always receive encouraging feedback from our working partner in Pakistan, Hanan Justin, who relates to us the life-changing effects in each village where we have opened a school; and every week, new requests for a school are received from rural villages.”

AGPS meets once a week at the Giltar Hotel in Tenby, not only to discuss the business of the charity (which registered with the Charity Commission in 2018), but also to study the word of God and to pray for God’s blessing on the work.

John says that he is now experiencing what is meant by the verse which says - ‘to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive’