GBU Bari

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Praise

At GBU Bari, we’re really grateful to the Lord for how this new academic year has begun. We had the pleasure of kicking off with an event, a discussion led by Professor Ken Smith on the subject of Science and Faith.

We were able to invite new students to the weekly meetings. The group has grown and is heterogeneous – there are Italians and non-Italians. We meet every Wednesday to read passages from Mark, and we thank God for all the students who are involved.

Prayer

Going back as far as last year, a number of non-believing students have been regularly attending. Pray the Lord would touch their hearts.

We’d also like to organise some outreach events in the University to meet new students. Pray for how we plan the various events we want to do, and for group cohesion and growth.

GBU Urbino

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Praise

At GBU Urbino, we’re immensely grateful to God for how He’s been working in the University.

Every week we have a least one new person coming along. We truly acknowledge this in our hearts.

Two Sundays ago we were able to do a presentation on the GBU’s mission in a local church in Pesaro, and asking for support and drawing people’s awareness to join in with the mission was very encouraging.

Last week we started a new series of studies on the book of Jonah.

Before the Christmas holidays we intend to hold two events, a Pizza Evening and board games with a Bible reflection and Christmas party. We’ve had a lot of volunteers also with booking the rooms at the University.

I am immensely grateful for and encouraged by the people who He’s put around me to serve Him together in the GBU. We’ve been praying about this for years and God is wonderful.

Prayer

We’re asking for prayer since, just when everything is going well, the disgruntled enemy puts his efforts into ruining things. Therefore, pray we would stay united as a group and grow both together as well as personally in our relationship with God.

Moreover, we’d like prayer for the contacts we make each week at the University in the canteen or in the student accommodation. We’ve recently met a lot of lonely people who need friends, and we’ve been able to talk to them boldly about Jesus. The Lord doesn’t forget anyone, not even in Urbino, and we’re confident that in the future a church will also be planted in this wonderful city.

GBU Rome

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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!

GBU Verona

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Praise

We really can thank God for how the group has got up and running again so fantastically. Before starting up the meetings again this year, there weren’t many students who seemed interested and we were a bit discouraged, given that last year we were a decent-sized group of 7-10 people. But instead, we were surprised by how God sent us people.

There are new students who come along (among whom there’s a Catholic boy) and it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to open up the group and get known by more people. In fact, friends of this boy are probably going to come along, as well as a Catholic girl. In total there are ten or so of us this year, despite there being five or six of us at the meetings. This year we meet in person on Saturday morning, but we allow those who can’t be there the option of joining via Zoom, the hybrid way!

Prayer

We’d like to give thanks and at the same time pray for the Catholic friend who was an atheist up until a year ago and is now reading the Bible with us. Let’s pray he’d bring his friends along, so that we’d be bringing God’s Word to more people.

Up until now, we’ve only had two meetings, so pray for us too, the group coordinators (Gloria and Jessica) that we’d be witnesses for the others.

Moreover, Gloria is going off to do Erasmus in February, so let’s pray we find someone else to help Jessica.

GBU Ravenna

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It’s my first year as Group Coordinator and I’m enthusiastic about it because I can see there are a lot of students who need to feel Jesus’ presence.

This is why I’m asking for prayer for students to come along and be keen to read the Bible, and for me, that I’d have wisdom.

I’m already thanking the Lord for letting me start up the GBU in Ravenna and for the students He sent along to the first meeting, all of them really keen and interested.

GBU Modena

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At GBU Modena we’ve been pleased to start up again after the summer break.
We held an introductory evening to present the GBU where we showed people the first series of meetings we were planning to do.
The topic we’ll start reflecting on is “Where do we come from? Reading and discussion from the book of Genesis”, where we’ll focus on the first three chapters.
We’re thinking of suggesting a trip to the observatory of astronomy, to look at God’s marvellous creation as a way of rounding up this topic.

Praise

We thank God for His guidance and care. The Group is coming together and is becoming more united.
We have various ideas for the year.

Prayer

We’re asking for prayer that new students would join us. A few came along from time to time last year. Let’s pray they’d be more regular this year.
We’re asking for prayer for the outreach event we’d like to hold on the meaning of Christmas towards the middle of December.

GBU Messina

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We’re grateful for having started meeting up again this year too.
We prayed that new Christian students would arrive this year and Jesus answered our prayer. Six new Christian students joined our group.

Praise

An international girl student we met last month while doing a survey has also joined our group.
In October we went into the University with our staff to talk about Jesus one on one. Before getting going, we stopped to pray together. As soon as we’d prayed, we noticed a girl sitting under a tree and felt led to speak to her. When she understood what the GBU was, she was shocked. She picked up the book on her lap and showed it to us, exclaiming, “This is my Bible!”. She told us she had moved to Messina to study and, right before setting off for Italy, she’d asked Jesus for some other Christian students to find her, that He would be the one to send them to her, because otherwise she wouldn’t have known how to find them. We immediately knew Jesus had led us to speak to her – we were the answer to her prayer.
This experience encouraged us hugely and now we’re thankful for being able to do our meetings both in Italian and English.

Prayer

This is also a great challenge, which is why we’re asking for prayer.
We’re also asking for you to pray that GBU Messina could become a University Association, so that we can be more present right inside the University.

We’re already planning the meetings for the following months, so we’d like prayer for there to be more students who don’t know Jesus.

GBU Pisa

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After being on hold for years, GBU Pisa has finally started up again!

Praise

There’s no shortage of believer students, so we can arrange events that are well attended, where we can cultivate a good atmosphere.

Prayer

We’ve already had some non-believers at our meetings, let’s pray they’d come back and go deeper with the Gospel message!
Our meetings are evenings only, which means choosing a suitable venue has been hard and has obviously impacted on how much people can get from our meetings. Let’s pray God would guide us in these logistical matters!

GBU Milan

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise
  • New students (believers and non) are participating regularly in the meetings and seem interested in the topics we’re covering.
  • Compared with last year, everyone is more involved in the meetings, they are making a lot of observations and are asking questions about the passage.
  • Working together with the Church, il Rifugio [the Refuge], we’ve set up an English club at the University where American believers have come along to have conversations in English. During the two weeks there has been a lot of involvement and we’ve been able to witness to some people who participated in the meetings.
Prayer
  • To manage to do more outreach in the University.
  • For the presence of the Holy Spirit as we run the activities (Inductive Bible Studies/social activities).
  • Making an effort to maintain and cultivate relationships with other students.
  • Holding inductive Bible studies which are clearer and more effective at getting to the message God wants.
  • Spiritual growth of each group coordinator and the support to continually improve required as a coordinator.

GBU Florence

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti
Praise

This year the Lord has been pouring out blessings on us beyond all expectations.
We started our exams precisely a month ago, and so far we’ve had an average of 16-17 people at these four meetings. It’s also wonderful to see how much involvement and interest there has been by people.
It’s really incredible to see how the Lord is working in this city. We can only thank Him and praise Him for what he’s doing.

Prayer

As prayer requests, it would be great to form relationships with the people would come to the studies and in any event find new ways to organise events to attract others (especially non believers).
Another prayer request, perhaps taken for granted by the most important one is that those who don’t know the Lord would accept Him in their hearts and that our meetings would transmit the love of God through the Word.
We’re especially asking for prayer for M and M, two young men non-believers, who haven’t even skipped one meeting yet.

Thank you for this opportunity to share our progress and what is going on. It’s wonderful to see how the Lord is always working.