Thursday, April 16, 2009

Iasi Outreach


Thank you for your prayers for the outreach in Iasi. It was a very encouraging week for everyone involved in the outreach. We saw God work in many wonderful ways!! There were over 100 Christian students involved, and after a week of knocking on doors we talked to a total of about 5,000 students in the Tudor dorm complex. We gave out many New Testaments and had great discussions with them. Often when we shared with students about grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ, they told us that they had not heard this before. During the week I only talked to two really post-modern students. The rest were fairly open and interested in discussing their ideas related to faith and God.

There were many stories of how God worked during the week. One night around 1 am. a student involved in the outreach that lives in the dorm complex heard two students discussing outside the dorm the fact that one of them had heard that salvation came through faith by grace not by works. This is what we had prayed for, that the dorm complex would be filled with the scent of grace and forgiveness.
Saturday we were able to present a seminar to the students on how to use Scripture with their friends and lead investigative studies. Becca, from the UCCF team, led the seminar and the students felt it was helpful. Pray for them now as the students go back to those they met during the outreach and try and set up some Bible discussion groups!
Mike, Ionel (OSCER Staff) and Luke (UCCF Staff) leave a meeting


It was great to see how open the students where to talking to us in Iasi and how many came at night to the apologetic presentations and then stayed for over an hour asking questions. One young lady came from an invitation she received from a Christian student that lived across the hall from her. She had lots of questions and even went out for pizza with a group of us after the meeting. It was amazing to see how open she was. Then she came to a church service on Sunday morning where I spoke on grace.

Please pray as the follow-up continues in Iasi. We have already heard of a few students that have accepted Christ due to the outreach. Pray for the Spirit to continue to work in students' hearts!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Mid Week Report Iasi Outreach

The UCCF Team at the largest Orthodox church in Romania

The outreach in Iasi is going very well this week. Thank you for your prayers, we really appreciate it. We have seen God working in many ways. There are around 100 students who have joined together from 9 different organizations and groups to reach out to the 20,000 students in the Tudor dorm complex. The Christian students have been very encouraged at how open the students in the dorm have been to discussing. We have had 2 apologetic nights and there have been a 70-80 students coming to these short presentations and then they have an opportunity to ask questions. The topics have been:
Tues. night "If God is good, why do suffering and evil exist?"
Wed. night "Do all religions lead to God?"
Thurs. night "Is the Bible reliable?"

Luke and Whitney Cawley
Luke worked with us for 3 years in Bucuresti and now is on staff with UCCF in the UK. He is a very talented evangelist and has been giving the apologetic talks at night. He has done a great job at answering difficult questions in a way that is easy for the students to understand and constantly leads them to focus on Jesus.

Radu Onu
Radu was a leader in OSCER at the beginning and now is the pastor of the Eclesia Church in Iasi. They have a house right in the dorm area that we have been using for the apologetic talks. Radu has a huge heart for evangelism and has helped gather together a team of people to lead and pray for this week of outreach.

On Sat we will have a seminar to help teach students how to use Scripture with nonbelievers. Pray that this will be a good tool for Christian students to use as follow-up to the conversations they have had this week and pray that students would be open to studying God's word.
Thank you!
Aidan & Abi pose by the signpost pointing toward London!