Mission Day 1: Mons

Give thanks that...

- It didn't snow! It rained lightly all day, but that was workable.

- The 2 Bible College students from Paris who've come to help us for the week, Jonathan & Damien (& a 3rd who joined us for most of today) are great, and a big encouragement to IFES team and GBU students alike even by their presence with us - and also their evangelism.

- 3 of the Mons GBU students came to join in at various parts of the day. The leader opened up the church building for us and left us making coffee & filling the tap-flasks while she went off to her day of lectures. 2 girls joined in doing flyering & questionnaires later and even set off for the Grand'Place to do it there, Barnaby in tow. This is great. However they found students at the Grand'Place more hurried and hostile to even taking flyers, which was not great. They're still enthusiastic though: praise God :)

- I'd some beneficial conversations with students, from the questionnaires. I do find it harder in French to pick up on the subtleties though - like discerning when you can push a question further or the manner in which to introduce what the Bible says about a subject. But no matter how 'well it goes' I remind myself & others that we're helping people to reflect and go away taking with them something of what the gospel says about God, Jesus, the greatest problem and how we can be accepted by God (as they take away a copy of the questionnaire with appropriate Bible passage/verses to the side).

Please pray...

- that others from the Mons GBU group would join in tomorrow. I really want to be discipling the Mons GBU students in evangelism, not just doing evangelism (no matter how valuable that is). But if they're not there, they can't be discipled in evangelism! The students do have busy class schedules but half of the group we haven't seen since the second semester started at the end of January: please pray that they'd show up prepared to do evangelism, no matter how scared they are. I really want them to be knowing fully every good thing that is in them for the sake of Christ, and Paul tells Philemon that sharing the faith has that effect, by God's work. So I really want them to take this opportunity to share their faith with other students. I really want students in Mons to come to worship God through Christ Jesus, his most precious and perfect Son whom God gave in love to die for sinners. I pray that some may so do as a result of these couple of days. But more so that Mons GBU students would be encouraged and trained in helping other students hear of this Saviour so that they would continue to do so after these couple of days. Please join with me in praying for these things.

- Tomorrow is the Mons evening event: a meal & message. With the publicity themed on Love Actually (and tomorrow being Saint-Valentin), the title for the message is "Que je t'aime!" which is the title of a Jonny Halliday song and means roughly "How I love you!" (or it could be "That I love you!") - I haven't looked up the song to find out from the context (I'm not the one doing the talk, just the flyers this time!). The talk's going John 3.16 anyways. Please pray for students to come, have eyes opened to see Christ and not leave in apathy but response. And pray that it will be a response of God-given faith in the one Saviour and Lord.

- Please pray for continued energy and encouragement in the gospel for the IFES team and guys from France.

Thanks for your partnership through prayer with us in the gospel in Belgium.