Student Alpha

It’s a hard knock life. Travelling to South America to tell a brilliant bunch of students about evangelism. I don’t know how I get out of bed in the morning...

In June 2010 Student Alpha travelled to Chicago for the Alpha Americas week, where over 1200 people gathered together to get equipped and inspired about using Alpha as a tool for evangelism. It was there that we met the lovely Carmen Castillo, General Secretary of the IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) movement in Chile.

Carmen invited us to go to Chile to attend the annual IFES conference in February 2011, where more than 60 students involved in Christian mission at universities all over Chile meet together for a week of Bible study, evangelism training and general fun times.

After 27 hours of travelling: flying via Madrid and Santiago and then scraping the top of the Andes we were picked up in a very sturdy, but remarkably small car by an IFES staff worker and finally arrived in Rio Quino.

To say that we’d arrived in a picturesque corner of South America is a profound understatement. We were staying in a wooden lodge nestled on the edge of a steep forested bank that led down to a crystal clear river (with a handy football pitch carved out on the bank side) framed by snow topped volcanoes and mountains.

The following morning we were up bright and early to begin our training, and we were met by incredibly enthusiastic, intelligent and eager students, all passionate about seeing their friends, families and course mates get to know Jesus.

The training covered aspects of the Alpha course such as leading and facilitating small groups, praying for people and how to give great live talks. The group were really responsive to the training and asked questions about who should deliver the talks, how they could decorate their church or CU, and who could be praying for their course, as well as more general questions such as “does everyone in England wear clothes like those?... and why is your hair like that..?!”

We finished the end of day two with an hour long planning session where each group of students planned a Student Alpha course for their university. It was amazing to see the groups writing down launch party ideas, thinking about how they could get great food cooked for their course, and deciding how they were going to invite their friends to come.

We were so privileged to be part of this event, and it was amazing to see students on the other side of the world using Alpha in the same way that it’s used in Durham, Doncaster, Dallas and all over in more than 40 other countries.
Please pray for their courses which are starting in universities all over Chile in September. Check out our Facebook page to see more pics.