GBU Rome

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

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

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
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

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

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

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

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

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

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

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto

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.

GBU Chieti/Pescara

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise

We thank God that GBU Chieti-Pescara has started up again after a few years, and we’re encouraged by the support of local churches. There are currently only a few of us involved in the meetings, but we’re trusting God that the group will grow. As numbers are low, meetings aren’t always regular.

Prayer

This is the reason why we’re asking for prayer for other students to get to know the GBU and join in the meetings.

GBU Foggia

Tempo di lettura: < 1 minuto
Praise

We thank the Lord that after being on hold for a year, the group has started up again! To date we’ve managed to meet up regularly once a week, albeit online.

Prayer

Please pray the students would be more and more impassioned by the GBU vision, that they’d give it the right priority and that we’d be more encouraged to speak about Jesus with our colleagues.
We’re also asking for prayer that we’d manage to meet up in person, which is currently proving difficult, given everyone’s different availability.