Hi! I’m Zach and I’m from Leeds, England. I was very blessed to grow up in a Christian family and started following Jesus for myself at around twelve years old.

Before coming to Rome in September 2024, I studied History of Art at the University of Birmingham. During that time, I was very involved in the Christian Union (the equivalent of GBU in the UK) and through the support and training of
older Christians, God helped me grow in my love for Him and my confidence in sharing the gospel.

I graduated in 2023 and spent the last year as a Relay worker with UCCF, helping students in Birmingham to share their faith. Over the past year, my heart for world mission has greatly increased and when I heard about the opportunity to come and work with GBU through IFES InterAction I was really excited!

Now that I have arrived in Rome, I’m learning to depend on God in a new way with the practical challenges of living in a new country for the first time but I’m so grateful God’s provision of very kind friends and colleagues. I’m already learning much from Italian believers and so far I’ve greatly enjoyed meeting the students in GBU Roma, and I’m looking forward to helping them share the gospel through Bible studies and outreach on campus. I have a strong love for art and I’m excited
about the opportunities to help students engage with Italy’s rich art history as a starting point for talking about the gospel.

In my times of rest, I enjoy painting, cooking (and eating!) and going for walks in the countryside.

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GBU activities have been running for a month and a half already, and have included prayer meetings, inductive Bible studies held in various faculties, faculty outings to speak to students we met on campus and evening training sessions!

Praise

So we thank the Lord for the opportunities He’s giving us to do all this.
We also thank Him for the students who transferred to universities in Rome this year who already know Jesus. We are hoping they will have a heart for the GBU mission and will invite their university friends and colleagues along to meetings.
We’re also grateful to God for those students who already joined the group last year, who are becoming more and more involved in activities, and because the team of group coordinators and staff has expanded!

Prayer

Please pray that students’ lecture times would be compatible with meetings, so that meeting in the faculty would get easier. Let’s pray that the high levels of enthusiasm in participating in activities would remain the same and that we will be daring in sharing our faith with our friends at the university.

We have currently started a new series of studies called Coming Across Jesus. Our prayer is that students who don’t yet know Him will come across Jesus this semester!

Manuel was born in 1999 in Rome. He came to know Christ as Savior and Lord at the age of 14, even though he was born and raised in an evangelical family.
He comes into contact with GBU in 2018 working as a GBU coordinator in the Tor Vergata University of Rome.
In 2020, he decided to abandon his studies in Civil Engineering to begin his studies at the Italian Evangelical Biblical Institute (IBEI), earning a Bachelor’s degree in Theology with a focus on Biblical Languages in 2023. His heart has always been sensitive to Mission, joyfully welcoming the opportunity to serve among university students, especially internationals in Rome.
He serves in the “Alpha Omega Christian Church” as the teenagers’ leader.
He loves reading, music, MARVEL superheroes, movies and TV series.

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One reason to give thanks is certainly starting up activities again this new semester, which began with a conference given by Susanne Waldner, in which how to manage stress and anxiety was discussed.

We said goodbye to some of the international students, but we also welcomed in new students at the Sapienza and at Tor Vergata. Therefore, meetings in the faculties are therefore proceeding well attended and with invaluable times of discussion and reflection. We have just finished a series of studies on the book of Jonah, with which we began the semester.

On the 2nd and 3rd April, we put on The Mark Drama, the whole of Mark’s Gospel portrayed in 90 minutes. We thank the Lord that this project came to fruition, and we’re continuing to pray for all those who were involved or took part in it.

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This week, in collaboration with the Gideons, we distributed copies of the New Testament and Psalms in the Roma Tre University. Pray for all these people reached, that the Lord would touch their hearts and new students would join the GBU meetings. We also give thanks for how the Lord worked on past occasions of New Testament distributions.

We’re also grateful for all the students who took part this year, new and old alike, because more and more of them are wanting to be actively involved in sharing the Gospel.

We’re praying for and giving thanks for a student at Tor Vergata University who, precisely following a New Testament distribution last May, has begun coming along continually to the GBU studies and always bringing his friends with him.

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In GBU Rome we thank God for getting off to a good start again this semester.

The series we’ve been running in the Bible studies has been working well, even though students have not been attending that regularly.

Students have been taking it in turns to come along, i.e., there are different students at every meeting, and one of the reasons for this is that it’s hard to find a time that works well for everyone, but we won’t be discouraged. Rather, we’re thanking God that there are new students in the group, including internationals.

Pray about the new series of studies on the topic of science and faith, which we’ll be conducting throughout November. We’re excited about having Nicola Berretta, Doctor of Biological Science with us as a guest one evening. Pray that a lot of students would come along that evening.

We’re also asking for prayer for a practical matter; to find an available hall or church hall venue close to the centre for our meetings, for at least until the GBU hall becomes available again.

As we’re already starting to plan the December studies, keep us in your prayers.

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Praise

In the GBU group in Rome we are very grateful for the online outreach week we were able to arrange. We reached various people we did not know, and we are hoping to keep getting to know them and involving them in our weekly meetings!

Preghiera
  • We are praying for the meeting over the next two months, that the students would be keen to join in and that we would also reach new people despite all the difficulties.
  • We are also praying to be motivated in organising the various activities.
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In GBU Rome we’re thanking the Lord for His guidance and constant support, especially in the strange times in which we’re living.

We recommenced our activities with an online event in October and it was encouraging to see new faces. We have new freshers among us, but it has proved harder than usual to reach non-believer students. With this aim we are encouraging our students to invite non-believer colleagues to join in with GBU events.

To mark the occasion of World Student Day we met, socially distanced, outside, and despite there not being many of us, we had a special time of prayer and fellowship.

Our prayer points are:

  • For the group in general, particularly for students to encourage other students to join us, whether or not they are believers.
  • For organising a pre-outreach online event, aimed at arousing interest and challenging non-believers to join in the weekly meetings. We also want to challenge all group members to invite along at least one non-believer friend.
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We’re full of ideas and ready to serve the Lord in Rome. God is helping us learn a lot from studying the letter to the Romans in the weekly meetings in the three faculties.

Moreover, we’re already arranging a Christmas-themed outreach event for 2 December. To involve more people and have more “fun”, we thought about having an Open Mic event where we can sing carols, recite poems (bringing back memories of primary school productions) and/or other things, drawing the evening to a close with a brief reflection.

We’re asking for prayer that GBU Rome members will help out as much as they can and that our colleagues at university join in.

Aside from the outreach event, we’re asking for prayer for all the students in Rome, that God would remove the indifference that there is among them to the Gospel and spiritual matters.

We thank God for having got to know students as a result of distributing the Gideon Bibles, and we’re thankful that there are two coordinators per faculty to encourage one another.

Finally, we’re thankful for having international students among us too. However, we’re also asking for prayer about this last point, because structuring bilingual activities is quite a challenge for us.

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This spring was full of blessings for GBU Rome! We resumed activities after the winter break and right away, various friends came into contact with our group and attended the evening events. There was also a good turnout to the Bible studies at the University, especially at the Roma Tre University where, for a couple of years there has not even been a stable group! In contrast, this year the group is running and a number of friends from our courses are interested and are attending the meetings, praise God!

We also thank the Lord for having Grace on the team, a new coordinator. We are praying that other students would be interested in this role, and especially that it would be a male student.

In terms of events, we held the outreach week in the third week of March. We distributed around 5 thousand tracts in the universities and held three evenings on the topic “In search of happiness”. We took advantage of the diverse origins of GBU members to propose an international food evening. At the evening event we saw a lot of people for the first time and many of them even came from countries such as Mongolia and Kazakhstan. We are also grateful to God for all the friends who came. Some of them still come to our meetings and we are praying they will understand the message of salvation. We are especially praying for G. and E.

We also thank God for keeping the whole group united through the friendship among us.