Holiday in the UK and Back in Bologna...Part 3 (and January Prayer Update)

And now we're back. Once we arrived in Bologna, we had a few days to settle back into Italy before beginning Spring semester work...and things certainly didn't start slowly!

During our first week back, we worked with two different groups here in Bologna. Right now, it's summer in Brazil, and a group of Brazilian students chose to spend part of their summer on summer project in Italy. Crusade's ministry in Brazil is hoping to begin a partnership with Italy. We spent a day with the students here in Bologna, showing them the university and introducing them to life and work in this city. While it was crazy to try to communicate in a mixture of three different languages (Portuguese, Italian and English), we truly enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with this group--it's always encouraging to see new faces with fresh energy and enthusiasm. We also rejoined this group to work for a day on the campus in Verona last week. Some of these students are considering coming back to Italy in the future--please remember them in your prayers.

We also had the privilege of hosting a group of seven students and a CRU intern from Texas during their "vision trip" to Bologna. Everyone in this group, from TCU and Tarleton State University, is considering returning to Bologna for summer project or STINT next year. Again, it was a joy to see some new faces here in Bologna with so much excitement for what God is doing in this city. They joined us on campus for a few days, and we were able to meet so many new students! Praise God for these contacts and continue to pray as our team follows up on these new relationships. Please also pray for everyone from Texas as they make decisions about the future and consider coming back to Bologna.

Matt, Ashley, and I with everyone from Texas and their group leader, Lance Linnartz

At the end of our week with the Brazilians and the group from Texas, the Bologna Agape team attended an apologetics conference at Nuova Vita on conversational evangelism. Dr. Norman Geisler's son, Dr. David Geisler, taught at the conference. We also had the opportunity to share several meals with Dr. Geisler and discuss issues that we've encountered here in Bologna as we've interacted with students and hear more of his insights on how to address their questions and these topics.

We have also begun reconnecting with students we had met last semester. January is typically a slow month on campus--many of the students are still finishing exams. We expect momentum on campus to pick up again in mid-February. Right now, we're spending most of our time planning and preparing for the remainder of the year--the spring semester and summer project . On Saturday, we'll leave Bologna again for our STINT Midyear Conference in Nerja, Spain. Our team will join all of the STINTers from Europe and North Africa for this week-long conference. After this, we'll join all of the Italy STINTers in Florence for Institute of Biblical Studies, a week-long Bible class.

All of that being said, here's my latest prayer update, and I'll put up another post with more prayer requests soon!

Elizabeth

John 10:10