GBU Urbino

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti
Praise
  • We’re really thankful to God that there have been big improvements and changes within our group this year! We have a new, free room (despite needing to pressure the office a bit) in the centre of the colleges where we can make ourselves known much more through events because it’s in a strategic position, given that students only need to come out of their bedrooms to reach us! We’re really grateful for this! There really are a lot of people coming to listen to the Word in comparison with last year when we were a bit isolated!
  • Another reason to praise God is also for how He’s grown us as a group! We’re much more united, both in terms of friendship and as a team, because the people God has brought into the group have all been capable, each in a specific thing, making us an excellent team. We’ve also starting having prayer meetings every week, which also unites us more because, we’ve been praying not only for the GBU, but also for personal matters. Moreover, we’ve learnt a lot from our previous mistakes and have improved greatly.
  • We’re also hugely thankful for how God always provides for us, giving us great help from churches and brothers and sisters in Christ, despite the obstacles, in addition to making it so that people from outside the group always come along to listen.
Prayer
  • We’re asking you to pray that we’d be able to establish genuine, deeper friendships, with those who’ve been coming more regularly, so that we can disciple them from nearby, and not be afraid, but be brave enough to speak in front of a few people.
  • Pray also for upcoming events, that people will continue to come and be impacted by the message given.
  • But what we especially ask for prayer for is that we wouldn’t be demoralised. We come from a small group where very few people used to come to the events, and now we’ve become a much stronger group with a much greater “audience”, but if an event didn’t happen to go well, our fear is of becoming too disheartened since we’re now used to having more people.

GBU Cosenza

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • We’ve begun the prayer meetings and God is blessing us.
  • We’ve got a potentially permanent room, potentially with a year’s contract.
Prayer
  • We need more unity within the group
  • We need to find other young people who’d be suited to the potential role of coordinator for next year.
  • We need funds to organise more quality events (such as a jazz concert with a time of reflection on a topic of outreach, inviting a Christian lecturer to take on a particular topic etc.)

GBU Catania

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • We’re grateful to God for having given us the possibility of a venue in the centre of town where we can meet to carry out our activities
  • We thank God that the group has remained strong
  • We thank God for the Bible studies and outreach activities carried out last year in the various different universities
Prayer
  • That God would help us reach as many students as we can to be able to talk to about God and the Gospel
  • That the group will be increasingly united and will grow to glorify God
  • That God would give us, in line with what’s possible, new perspectives and ideas for carrying out our activities

GBU Catanzaro

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

At the start of this new academic year we thank God for the new arrivals and for the new activities we’ll be able to carry out together this year. At the end of the last session we left some Christian books in a little book case in the university café and, thanks to God, they’re being read!

GBU Catanzaro is asking for prayer for a dedicated area in which to hold meetings: last year there were a few problems but let’s pray they’ll be able to give us a fixed place.
We want to keep praying for those who took part last year that they’d come back together with others!
Pray for us as a group inside the university because we really want to start up some low key new activities.
We also thank God for being able share in this way, allowing us to pray for one another. We’re apart geographically but we feel nearby in prayer!

GBU Florence

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • We thank God for how He’s guided our presence in the faculty, allowing us to be able to make use of a room right in the middle of the university campus, where we can conduct weekly meetings and evening events! This will allow us to have an immediately strong start and to try to involve some new students.
  • We thank God for the new coordinators, for their enthusiasm and desire to serve God with the GBU and make Jesus known at the university.
  • Praise God for having created a GBU Christian group that can be relied on to plan the new year, the studies and events, bringing about a common vision to everyone!
Prayer
  • That we manage to nurture the contacts we have, made up of young people who have already been attending the meetings for a while. Let’s pray that God will impact their hearts.
  • Let’s pray that some new non-believing students would be moved by a desire to know Jesus and start coming to the meetings.
  • Please pray that this year’s activities would go well and for our desire to put on The Mark Drama again in Florence after some while.
  • Pray that God would give us wisdom in how to interact with our peers in order to share the Gospel message.

GBU Verona

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise

We want to thank the Lord that the group in Verona is growing. One Erasmus girl chose the university in Verona because the GBU group was there and this gave us a lot of encouragement. Since the start of the academic year, we’ve already managed to organise a breakfast, a pizza night and our event, “An hour in England” (our monthly event in English). Therefore, we cannot help praising God.

Prayer

We want to pray that the people who come to the “an hour in England” event would also join in the Bible studies and we want to pray about a desire we have as a group: to organise the Mark Drama. We want to ask the Lord to help us put it on in Verona!

GBU Pisa

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

Praise

  • After two long years of taking a break, GBU Pisa is back again thanks to God’s faithfulness and the prayers of those who have had it on their hearts at this time.
  • We thank the Lord for the various student believers who are sharing the GBU vision in this launch. Around ten new students joined the first two meetings and are interested in carrying on!
  • We are able to have even more new contacts with other student believers, potential GBU members, because of various Christian ministries in Pisa and its surrounding areas.
Prayer
  • At the moment we’re meeting in a quiet little room in a café for the studies that’s very centrally located and well-known. We’re continuing to look for a university venue for the weekly meeting which can be a fixed reference point for the whole year.
  • We’re asking God to unite the group, making us grow in size but more particularly to grow in His Word. That He’d bless our next meetings where we’ll get to know one another even better.
  • We’re praying for more contact with non-believer students through friendships and initiatives at the universities.

GBU Palermo

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

GBU Palermo started up again in October. At the moment there’s just a little group of us who meet in a café near the university each week to get to know about Jesus’ life through Mark’s Gospel.

Praise
  • We thank God for this new start
  • For giving us the enthusiasm to start up again from scratch
  • For a non-believer girl who started coming to the studies.
Prayer
  • That we’ll find a new place to meet, because the café is noisy and it’s hard to concentrate well during the meetings
  • That new believers would attend regularly and take this activity seriously
  • That God would guide us in organising future events at the university.

GBU Milan Polytechnic

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti

In the second week of lectures we handed out 2500 “Short Guides to Polilife”. The idea of distributing a large quantity of these comes from needing to make ourselves known as the GBU within the University. Whereas the idea of the guides comes from wanting to do something nice, useful and free for our friends.

The folding guide is 12 pages long and contains information about how to reach the Polytechnic, where to eat, a map of the various buildings, lecture theatres, playing fields, photocopying shops and other significant places, in addition to an introduction to what the GBU is and our contacts. We’ve translated it all into English so that we can give it to international students as well and we’ve added 10 fun tips on practical life in an informal “student to student” tone.
Several Italian and international young people stopped to ask us for more information or simply why we do what we do, and four of them wrote to us on Facebook to find out when and where we meet.
A lot of people reacted positively, affirming that it was a good idea, and the graphics were done well. A huge number of people were also amazed to read about the GBU.

Praise
  • For how God has lead the distribution of guides and for the young people we’ve made contact with (for example, Valentin, a French believer and young man discovered us through the guide, he’s attending regularly and has become an active member of the group).
  • For the opening event which was a blessing: we had a wonderful evening with around 60 people!
  • For times of growth and training (for example a meeting with staff and two international women helpers which enabled us to deepen the topic of “world views” and how to reach students from other cultures).
Prayer
  • For links with local churches, that they might share and support GBU’s vision.
  • For the “PP”s (Prayer Players), in the smaller prayer subgroups we’ve formed to get to know one another better
  • That there were would be more and more enthusiasm, participation and interest on the part of group members

GBU Bologna

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

GBU Bologna started up this year with a series of studies on the outrageous statements made by Jesus and with surveys conducted in the faculty. Various students joined us, many of whom are at Bologna on the Erasmus exchange programme. At the end of November, we’ll be doing a week of events.

Praise
  • Students who’ve recently joined us
  • The good outcome of the survey
Prayer
  • November’s events
  • An established prayer meeting for the group