Alpha Friends

Dear Student Alpha-ites,

My name is Alex and I’m a second year Mechanical Engineering student at Bath University. I wanted to write to tell you a little about my fresher’s year, and some of the exciting things God did. I hope you’ll find it encouraging.

Last year I was involved with two Student Alpha courses. The first was a big course run at one of the local churches in Bath. It was right at the beginning of the year and this meant pretty much from fresher’s week, I was able to ask if any of my new mates wanted to come along.

To my amazement some of them did!

Two of my flatmates in particular responded. Both came along most weeks and by the end of the course one of them had given their life to God! A pretty amazing way to start the year.

Then during the second half of the year God started to break my heart for the rest of my flatmates who hadn’t made Student Alpha the term before. I realised that there were probably some of them who might never have the same opportunity to hear about Jesus, and to me that was a really big deal.

So I decided to run an “Ironing-board”* Student Alpha in my kitchen.

*AKA Student Alpha Small – run for a few mates in your home (for example).

I Remember sitting in my kitchen, thinking “none of them will come now”, kicking myself after sending a really soppy message, telling them how I ‘had to tell them about Jesus!’. But by God’s grace, that first week, all but 1 of my 20 flatmates rocked up! And I mean agnostics, strong atheists; people who I never thought would ever be interested.

And from that week on, around 9 to 14 of would come along to discuss ‘The meaning of life’.

What amazed me most was their response. It was just so unexpected. Although a few wouldn’t be able to make every week, they were all really interested about God. Some of them would even bring their friends along. Their response was even more amazing considering I had decided to give the talks myself. I mean, I always felt unprepared, nervous; I kept losing my place and rambled a lot. But they all kept coming and were really engaging with what I was talking about.

Throughout my first year I started to see God doing the most amazing things in my flat. And from those two courses, two of my now ex-flatmates have started going to church, several others are still really interested, and all of them now know the Good News.

Fresher’s year was such a great opportunity to spread the Gospel through Student Alpha, and I would really encourage anyone to give it a go. If I can do it, you can too!

God will surprise you, and it’s so worth it!

From, Alex

We thought it would be nice to hear from some of you real students out there about your experiences in your first year as a 'Fresher'. So we've created this aptly named 'Letter from a Fresher' blog so you can do exactly that. This letter was from Alex, who isn't technically a fresher anymore... but he was one, only a few months ago.

If you're a fresher and want to write us a letter then please get in touch studentalpha@alpha.org

For more stories like this please visit www.studentalpha.org