FREE at Aston uni: Day 1

Aston University this week, and the CU's first focus week in 6 or 7 years. It's a fantastic campus, compact and in the city centre, with halls of residence on campus, and friendly Student Guild and uni, making it easy to hold events and flyer with invitations to those events. In fact, the Guild even sent an email round the student body, advertising the week of events! The CU members are all actively engaged in various societies, in halls and on their courses. The courses are hard, with plenty of work and lectures, but many CU members have worked hard to clear their diaries as much as possible for this week.

Today is a warm-up day, starting with stalls in the Guild and Uni foyers 9-5, with separate flyering in the lecture changeover times, some use of questionnaires, and "tower raids" in the afternoon - visiting all the flats in the halls of residence tower blocks, to offer FREE gospels and chat about Jesus. Then there's a girls' night in the evening, with a film followed by a talk by a CU member, picking up on themes from the film, and sharing how she became a Christian.

Give thanks for the good relations with the student Guild and the uni, for CU members keen to be on the stall and flyer, and yet also good at inviting friends along. Give thanks to for the discussions already going on with friends, for those reading Mark's gospel already, and for the couple of friends who have recently become Christians, are engaged in local churches, and are now taking advantage of a mission week for the first time, to witness to friends!

Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday there'll be lunchbars and evening events, at which John Newton Webb is speaking, so pray for him and for the other CU Guests, that the gospel of Jesus Christ would be clearly proclaimed, and that God would work powerfully by His Spirit to bring life and fruit from the seed as it is indiscriminately sown. The student population at Aston appear to be around a third East Asian and a third South Asian origin - whether British or not is hard to tell, but please pray especially for all those from a Muslim background, that they would consider Jesus, seeing in Mark's gospel that He is the Christ, the Son of God.

And for now, back to the stall for some questionnaires!