GBU Pisa

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti
Praise

We thank the Lord with all our heart for the encouraging answers to prayers and blessings that He gives us:

  • we confirmed the reservation of a teaching room for the whole semester, in a very central area of Pisa which is convenient for most of the students. This allows us to prepare flyers, having certainty of the venue;
  • the recent event on the topic of “Who is your #influencer” was very good and encouraging. We learned what works and what we could still improve on, and we thank Giovanni for his support! A sizeable group of students from the University halls of residence took part and are interested in future events too!
  • Young adults interested in the Word of God have been also attending the weekly study on the book of Ruth, to whom we are able to witness;
  •  Thank the Lord for the connections in the group which are developing and deepening. We have increasingly more opportunities to spend time together as friends.
Prayer
  • Thank you for your prayers, for having sustained us this far! Thank you, and keep praying for GBU Pisa:
  • We have thought out the next two GBU events, one on an historical subject and the other on a science-based one. Pray that God will guide us as we run it and inspire those who lead the reflection. The former will be the last event for this academic year, while the latter will be the first event for next year;
  • We are trying to encourage all GBU members to take part in running events. We are praying that everyone would be more involved and for a deep conviction of the GBU’s mission;
  • We are trying to include more and more students in events and in the weekly studies. We are praying that the Lord direct those who are seeking Him and that our witness will be effective!
  • In relation to the last point, as a group we want to grow in our ability to talk about Jesus with our friends, colleagues and also with people we do not know. Our local staff worker (thanks Zach) is preparing material for one-to-one training on evangelism.

“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

GBU Rome

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

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.

GBU Turin

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • we held a conference at Turin Polytechnic on 26 March entitled, “UNDER PRESSURE! Managing stress amid commitments, demands and expectations” given by Dr Susanne Waldner. It went very well. Lots of people came from outside (around 100) who, in addition to everything else, were able to hear a short but effective testimony by Susanne. We had some positive feedback, so we are thanking God for that and we hope to be able to bring some students to God.
  • Lorens (local GBU staff worker) has come back after being absent for a long time due to his broken leg
  • the opportunity that Paula (coordinator) has had to go on a mission trip to Greece
  • for everyone who has stayed faithful to the GBU by getting involved with us, and for those who continue to come along even though they have slightly different beliefs from us
  • for the opportunity to organise conferences on the Einaudi Campus
Prayer
  • for the mid-week meetings and for the group to bond because fewer people are attending
  • for those who we came into contact with us through the conference held in March, though not exclusively through that, that they would come to the GBU and to Jesus
  • for the upcoming conferences, there will be one in April on scientific topics (given by Prof. F. Shaeffer) and one in May on the subject of “Why I don’t do what I want to do” (given by Paul Chatfield)
  • for Lorens who broke his leg in August 2018, that it would heal completely and quickly.

GBU Palermo

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

In Palermo we are resuming GBU activities and introducing a few new ones for the spring.
In our weekly meetings over the last few months we have focused on the first chapters of the book of Acts in order to understand the features of the early church. At the last meeting, our staff member, Domenico suggested dedicating a day to all praying together and so that we can take some trips outside the university since there is in any case already a group of young adults here in Palermo who organise themed meetings. Therefore, we will be meeting in a church tomorrow which is hosting us for the morning so that we can begin these “new meetings”. Our next meetings will continue to be dedicated to prayer combined with going out into the university grounds to ask questions, do surveys etc. This will enable us to get known as a GBU group, understand what the students think about Jesus and talk about him.
Thank you for your prayers. Let’s pray for GBU Italy.

GBU Bari

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti

We are full of enthusiasm in GBU Bari but there are only a few of us to sustain it. Sadly, the difficulty of managing to find suitable times for most of the members persists, hence we continue the meetings with two or three people at the most. We had thought about running two GBU study groups, one in the Polytechnic and one in the Polyclinic, hoping there might be a solution, given that the lecture times are completely different from one another, but that has not yet proved effective. We are unsure whether to keep to this idea or go back to the former plan of one weekly meeting.
We are asking for prayer for this because we would like to form a big group which, at the same time is constant. In the meanwhile we will not give up because the Lord is with us and we cannot do anything else other than make ourselves available for Him.

In addition to the GBU study, we have introduced a new meeting where we can meet and pray fervently, not just for GBU Bari but also for the various initiatives of other local GBU groups and, if we are informed about them, also the international GBU groups. We will do this twice a month at the home of our local staff members, the Cowell’s. Prayer is the best weapon available to us!

An idea we have been mulling around and which we are getting ready for is to put on conversation courses in English led by a member of our staff, Simon, who is a native speaker. The idea is to promote a social activity without aiming to evangelise, through which to spread news about the GBU’s existence which would indeed promote it.

On 25 January we managed to give out over 900 Gospels in conjunction with the Gideons in the province in the various Polytechnic foyers, and we put a tract about the GBU inside them. Despite the cold and the rain that day, we noticed that many young adults from the University appreciated the public gesture and were grateful for it, as they posted stories referring to it on the University Instagram profile. They had worked out the importance of the Person who had motivated us to do this (it really was a roller-coaster day!).

Another event that took place was the Spring Training, a joint project with GBU Foggia and GBU Chieti, on 23 March. During the meeting the topic of which passages to highlight while evangelising was covered. Aside from the worship and prayers said about the projects and difficulties facing three GBU groups, the day was structured by dividing us up into pairs and simulating an imagined conversation between an atheist or agnostic and a believer, and afterwards reconvening to share the points raised from the individual conversations as a group. It really was such a pleasure to see and hear the young adults encouraged to go back in a different spirit, more prepared to evangelise and more certain of how to go about it. It was also good to catch up with old friends and make new ones ready to share the same goal: to spread the knowledge of Jesus from student to student. We hope to put on another event like this again in a few months’ time.

GBU Cosenza

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • We thank God for how we’ve got going again with the meetings and for the appreciation we get from students involved in the student activities and the academic staff overall.
  • We’ve been getting invitations and have been able to promote the Christian message in various ways and from multiple standpoints. God is opening the doors as we continue to work.
Prayer
  • We do not currently have a local student leader and often, when people offer to take on that particular role, more problems arise in their minds than exist in reality.
    Would you please pray that we help potential leaders overcome these kinds of obstacles that frequently occur in the various Italian groups.
  • Pray for the freshers and students who want to take part in our meetings, but who haven’t yet been able to be present.
  • For all those who’ve experienced the goodness and joy of Christian life, but now have different priorities and are living through times where they don’t have real serenity. Pray they’d be restored again and moulded by the great love of God that we’re proclaiming on the campus.

 

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GBU Rome

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti
Tor Vergata
  • We thank God for a good start back again. There are some new young believers who take part in our meetings, but more importantly, some non believers have started taking part! Some came along to events organised last year, others have always been invited to the Bible studies and this year they decided to come and have attended them regularly!
  • Pray that compromises would be found over when to hold the studies and that God would cause us to expand on the campus.
Roma Tre
  • This year the Roma Tre group kicked off again with a whole new group of students! In fact there wasn’t a group at the this university last year.
  • Pray that it would continue to grow in numbers and that our young adults would have the courage to speak to their friends about Jesus so that they can invite them to the meetings.
La Sapienza
  • The year started really well! At the first meeting we held of all the universities, there were 4 Colombian Erasmus student guests, and some of them still attend the Bible studies. We thank God that the weekly meetings have been well attended and that there has been a good rapport among us in the group. We had the World Student Day evening where we were very encouraged by seeing the broader view of universities in the world.
  • In November we’ll have a “My Hope” evening, where we’ll watch the film with Billy Graham, “The Cross” together and we’ll invite our friends.
  • Around mid December the GBU group in Rome will also put on The Mark Drama after a gap of some years! Pray the event will glorify God, lots of university friends will come and the whole organisation will go well.
  • In March we’re doing an outreach week, and this isn’t easy when the campuses are so large and so distant from one another. Pray that new people would be reached over these days.

GBU Foggia

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • Despite the fact that the Foggia group started very recently, there are a lot of us! Already ten or so people come to our meetings.
  • We’re really grateful to God because we’ve really seen how He is in control of everything, this year 2 girl believers moved here from other towns to study in Foggia, and the GBU provided them with a great way of integrating and getting to know believers they didn’t know.
  • Thank God for making a cafe available to us with a room where we can hold our meetings in peace!
Prayer
  • We’re looking for a university that can give us an available teaching room, so that it will be easier for our non-believer friends to come to the studies.
  • We’re planning an event for around Christmas time (1st event for GBU Foggia) which we can also invite our friends to.
  • We have a few contacts who are interested in getting to know God but are blocked by shyness or shame… Let’s ask God to convince them to come to our meetings.

GBU Turin

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • We want to thank God because we have a lot of new people and we can see that they’re very pleased with the group and excited about it.
  • We also give thanks that the activities have started up again so well.
  • But we’re especially thankful for the fact that one of our GBU members who converted last year, got baptised last week.
Prayer
  • For Lorens’ health (GBU staff) that he manages to recover more quickly than what the doctors are saying.
  • Pray for the new people, that they would make a commitment to Jesus.
  • Pray for the student committee, that we would grow as a team and work well this year to the glory of Jesus.

GBU Bari

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • Even though only a few of us have managed to meet up, we have succeeded in forming a tight-knit group, well in tune with one another, like a proper family.
  • Thanks to the Lord, we managed to get organised with the weekly meetings straight away.
  • We’ve also made contact with non-believers who were interested in taking part in the meetings.
Prayer
  • For a girl, M-E, who we met in a cafe during one of our meetings, and after we included her in our bible study, we left her our contact details. Pray that she’ll come to find us at our next meetings.
  • That we’ll find a way to involve most of the young adults who are interested.
  • For the giving out of GBU invitations at the universities, which we’ll be doing soon.