We thank the Lord for how this new academic year began, with the Lord giving us a lot of new participants, enough to have to arrange two weekly Bible studies this semester!
Pray for our friends who don’t yet know Jesus and pray that as a result of the evangelising training we received, we will be prepared to explain the reason for the hope and faith we have.
GBU Palermo is going fairly well!
We meet regularly every week to share some Bible passages. We began by studying the 7 “I am” of Jesus.
Moreover, as we’re not often able to meet in person, we’ve started facetiming each Saturday to pray together. This allows us to keep staying in touch.
We have some prayer requests:
We really want to thank God for giving us the opportunity, energy and blessing to have already organised numerous activities: start of year party, mountain retreat, conference in Turin Polytechnic (see photo), games evening, weekly discussions, surveys, distribution of “PolyLife” guides, prayer meetings, etc.
We’re pleased with how the new academic year has begun as we’ve managed to reach lots of new people and, at the same time, we’re also seeing that those who have been involved in the GBU for longer, are more passionate about serving than they were last year. Therefore, we can’t help but praise the Lord for how He’s been working both within and outside of the group.
We’re asking for prayer support for organising the next conference at the start of December: as we’re wanting to hold it on the Einaudi campus, we’ve been coming up against a few logistical problems.
Furthermore, we’re hoping and asking for prayer to be able to reach a lot of people this time too, since the topic will cover violence against women.
In addition, please pray that those of us who run the group will have deeper and more sincere fellowship with one another, so that we can serve the Lord with joy, passion and above all, unity.
Finally, we’re asking for prayer for God to bless us with seeing people submit themselves to Him and converting as a result of our service.
In April, probably the 11-12 and 15, we will bring the GBU “Bible Exhibition” right into the centre of the university! We are praying for the venue to be confirmed as soon as possible and that the exhibition will arouse curiosity in the various students so that they become interested in the GBU (and in God of course!).
We are asking for prayer for our non-believing friends/neighbours, that there would be an interest in what we are doing and that they would be encouraged to know more about it, that we would not be afraid of what we are saying but would rather be always sharing our knowledge of Jesus from student to student.
We are asking for prayer for new coordinators, because both the current ones are finishing their university careers.
We thank the Lord that new people have been coming to the meetings in recent weeks, including those who have not been converted, and there are also others who are interested and have confirmed they will come back soon to do a study with us!!
We thank the Lord because, despite the various university commitments, the studies on Mark are going well and we especially thank Him for the fact that our local GBU staff are always encouraging us and spurring us on!
The GBU year has started off amazingly, beyond all expectations, with of course highs and lows depending on the more or less demanding times at the University.
On 23 March we were able to run some Spring Training together with GBU Chieti and GBU Bari. It was a really special day of sharing, learning and reflecting, and useful too for taking stock of where our group is in the middle of this academic year.
It was especially encouraging to consider how, despite being set up recently, the Foggia group has already reached six friends who would like to attend our meetings.
For us, that is a lot of people! We are still praying and trying to keep up the contact with them. This is definitely a prayer point.
In addition, a survey we are doing with some questions regarding Jesus and the Bible is underway and should finish soon.
We hope this will be a way to reach other students. Finally, we are still looking for a lecture hall in the university for our meetings. So far, we have not managed to get one and we are meeting in a bar, but it would be good to be able to use a lecture theatre.
We are nonetheless very thankful to God for how He has greatly blessed us so far. The GBU has also been a way of meeting believers from various backgrounds, forming new friendships and sharing Jesus together!
When the group in Verona started up three years ago already, it was somewhat in its infancy, small and wanting to do a lot but was capable of little.
The two girl coordinators, who were virtually the only ones in the group at the time, had lots of energy and a captivating enthusiasm which certainly came from God and which was one of the reasons why today’s writer wanted to take up their role after they left (Iris has just graduated in Law and Valentina in Economics). I would therefore like to thank God for giving these girls this strength and determination and for the work they did in Verona.
Now, three years on, we still feel like a small group, because even though there were 11 of us at the last meeting, there are over 22 thousand students at the university who for the main part do not know Jesus. Therefore, in order to do our best to fulfil the GBU motto, we have decided to apply through university to become an official group on campus and be able to run events in the different faculties. In view of the requirements stipulated by the university for this application, I would say it will take a miracle, nonetheless we have something else in common with the group from three years ago, we believe that God works miracles.
Thus, we thank God for all the students who have started coming to our group and for those who have finished studying, for the study room we managed to find to meet in and for the friendships that have developed in the group. And we are praying for the application progress which will take place in May, for the young adults at the university who we have talked to about Jesus and that God gives us a sense of urgency and importance to need to share with everyone what Jesus has given us.
GBU Verona has started praying, and we are keen for you to pray with us.
The GBU group in Siena is a bit under-resourced at the moment, there are in fact lots of non-believing young adults coming to our meetings but there are not many of us to keep the activities going, even though staff are actively collaborating.
We are therefore asking for prayer both for the young adults who are listening to the Gospel truth (we are studying the Gospel of John) and also the Christian students who continue to witness and involve themselves in the work of God at the University.
An inter-cultural dinner is planned for next week, we are praying for it to go well and for active participation.
We thank the Lord with all our heart for the encouraging answers to prayers and blessings that He gives us:
“May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”– Ruth 2:12
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.
