Variety is the spice of life.

Once again this week I've had lots of different things on the agenda! This past Monday we had our final day of lectures for the New Testament Survey course that all Agape staff have been going through this year and quite a day it was too! As you might imagine, with it being the last of the days we were looking at the end of the New Testament...Revelation, shall we say it was quite intellectually demanding and I found it a tough slog but it was interesting to hear some perspectives on a book I've never had a great grasp of. Now I've just got to write my course assignment, for some reason I chose the topic of eschatology so I've quite a bit of work to do on that over the next few weeks!

This week is also the Agape European Leaders Conference in Newcastle. All the campus and national leaders from around Europe are meeting together to discuss vision and do ministry on our North Eastern campuses (Newcastle, Northumbria, Durham and Sunderland). Yesterday around 40 staff and members of the Christian Union went out on Newcastle campus alone sharing their faith! I almost ended up going to this at the last minute but decided to stay in Birmingham.

I was in the office Tuesday and it was great to see Tom who was in for the day, I worked on the Newcastle mission week with him in February, he's considering joining Agape. I also got myself into a video which is being made about the office explaining why the office staff's work is so significant for our ministry and equipping staff on campus. I felt like a character from the BBC comedy "The Office"!

Once again we had a great day at Aston Univeristy doing evangelism on campus yesterday. I had the chance to meet a couple of people who have thought a lot about spiritual things, one of them, Neil, has a similar background to me and lots of Christian friends so people are going to be doing some follow up to show why Christianity is relevant today.

Today I have been busy talk writing. I am doing a presentation for training about how you can be sure you are a Christian and I'll probably be giving it to students at Aston and Birmingham as well over the next couple of weeks.

It's been great to have so much variety this week, it makes a change as the run up to the end of term can sometimes be an admin drag! Praise the Lord for all He is doing amongst students in the West Midlands!

Thanks for all your love and prayers.
God Bless, love
andy

A day out at Aston

I have had a great day today, spending the afternoon at Aston University. We have been running an Action Group (evangelism group) there on Wednesday afternoons for a couple of months now and had varying numbers of students coming out with us to meet other students on campus. A lot of the Christians who have been joining us live in Dalton Tower Hall of Residence so we have been focussing on meeting other guys who live there.

Today I went out into Dalton Tower with Helen, a member of the Christian Union committee and met Sophie, a French student on a diploma exchange from a university in France. She has recently met a Christian who has been talking to her about Jesus and the Lord really provided us with a perfect opportunity to share the gospel with her. We chatted for over an hour on all sorts of topics related to Jesus and Christianity and explained what it looks like to be a Christian and what it means to have a relationship with Jesus.

It was a brilliant time and we also talked about the books "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel and "Mere Christianity" by C.S.Lewis, I've been able to sort out mailing the books to her over the summer while she is back in France, she is really eager to read them! As her course is a two year exchange she will be back next year and Helen has agreed to meet her and talk about things further after she hass read the books. Please pray that Sophie would be able to process what we talked about and get a lot out of the books and that next academic year (or before) she might come to know Jesus!

Tomorrow is our day at Warwick so I will be there. We are running an Action Group and meeting various key Christian students, please pray for a productive day and that non Christian students might come to know the Lord.

Thanks for your love and prayers, God Bless
andy

Welcome

Welcome to my new (and first!) web space. I decided it was about time I caught up and had somewhere online to post all the exciting things going on in my ministry as they happen. Lots of other people do so I thought I should come up to speed and give you all somewhere to look at to find ministry information.

Lots of things have been going on recently so here is a quick update regarding the state of play on the campuses I am working at.

I have been seeing more and more changes in both the people I am working with and the places that I am working. Here in the West Midlands it has been decided to break up our team (which has been getting impractically big) into two teams with different focuses, one in Birmingham and one in Coventry. I am going with the Coventry team to work mainly at Warwick Univeristy in the next academic year and am currently working there a day a week with Martin to get things started. Its great. Agape started doing stuff at Warwick in January and we have had a great welcome, the CU are really eager to work with us and we are having fun developing evangelism strategies together and meeting students to share our faith with. I have had some good conversations about the gospel with students there and there is a genuine interest amongst none believers...Praise the Lord. Hopefully the more we get going the more we will see God change lives!

I'm still busy doing things in Birmingham however and had a great day yesteday at Aston University. I was out with a colleague meeting students busy revising and had a great chat with Rob who is really interested in the gospel. It really is quite amazing, at Aston the Live Music Society is quite big and there are plenty of student bands, one of them is called 6 Degrees and it seems wherever I go I meet members of this band! There are 6,000 people at Aston and yet I have randomly met 3 members of 6 Degrees and had an opportunity to share my faith with them...the Lord is really on these guys cases! All being well we are seeing Rob again to chat further about why what we do with Jesus is so significant in life. He wants to get involved with the CU and is seeking to understand more and it was like we could see him changing as we talked with him. Please pray for him!

I also haven't toally rejected Birmingham Univeristy! I have some great contacts there, Nick and David are English students who are very into acting, we met them doing surveys and now we have a great relationship with them and meet up regularly for a drink to talk about Jesus. They are gradually starting to gain understanding of the gospel which is again really exciting. I have been out quite a bit recently at "The Vale" which is where the main Brum halls of residence are, the lake there attracts a lot of students revising at this time of year. Over the past week I have had great conversations with a French philosophy student and a Korean engineering student. We had fun chatting and hopefully I am going to get the chance to get together witht the Korean guy again.

A couple of things you can pray for.

* Rob at Aston and Nick, David and Kim (Korean student) at Birmingham, pray that the Lord would continue making steps in their lives.

* The developments at Warwick, things are going well there but pray that God would continue to bless our efforts and see more fruit, both in the lives of the Christians and in people coming to faith!

* The office. We are currently looking at moving the Agape national office closer to the campus in Birmingham, we have so far found a few places that have looked promising but nothing has worked out. Please pray that God would lead us to the right place even if that means staying where we are!

God Bless
andy