CMS missionary Gillian Law works with students in the Italian group Gruppi Biblici Universitari (GBU—the University Bible Group in Italy) to bring the gospel to other students. May 2022 was a great month for the gospel. 

Given the severity of the past few years, the level of uncertainty in 2022 for Italian gospel ministry amongst students was always going to be high. Against that background, Gillian Law is rejoicing. She reports from Rome that, “May 2022 was the best month we’ve had since the start of the pandemic for campus evangelism”.  

Gillian continues the story:  

We’ve had non-believing friends and contacts join us regularly for weekly Bible studies.  

One student, Matteo*, wrote a message to me last week saying, “I think I’m on the right path to understand true faith.” Pray for him! We’ve also made connections with new students. At the start of the month we joined with the Gideons to distribute New Testaments to students at one university. Through this we met a student, Luca*, who told us about his friends who had taken New Testaments. The previous day one of these friends had tragically lost his cousin in a terrible work accident.  

When Luca’s friend arrived at uni the next day, obviously devastated, the first thing that happened was some stranger (actually a GBU member) gave him a Bible. He took this as a sign that God wanted to comfort him through his grief. We asked Luca if his friend had started reading the Bible. No, he hadn’t. This is not surprising, as there is a lot of superstition around many events: simply the presence of a Bible could be taken as a sign of God’s intention to comfort someone, somehow.  

Also, practically speaking, if you’d never opened a Bible before where would you start? So one of our students suggested some passages, Luca took notes, and the conversation went from there. We invited them back for Bible study the following week. And Luca came! Not only so, but he brought another friend, Franco*.  

Both Luca and Franco then came to Bible study for the rest of the month (until we closed for the exam session). They were great discussions: open, honest, respectful. At the end, both said how surprisingly at ease they found themselves comparing and contrasting beliefs with other students.  

Pray for them and for other university students who received Bibles during the month of May. 

PRAY 

Pray that students in Rome who received free Bibles would read, question, and come to trust the gospel message. 

 * names changed for privacy reasons