N week, O week, LUSA & LUCF

Acronyms. Don't ya just love them?!

LUCF is the Lincoln University Christian Fellowship; they've been working hard to build good relationships with LUSA - Lincoln University Students Association. And as part of that growing relationship we're helping out with N & O weeks.


O week is Orientation week - the first week on campus for the new academic year and the new undergraduates. In readiness for that, LUSA has been making 4000 packs to be handed out at registration time. It's been wonderful to see that LUCF have managed to work with LUSA to get an orange LUCF flyer into the packs. The flyer details the LUCF, some LUCF O week activities and includes a LUCF church guide with details of the ten or so local churches attended by LUCF members. It's fantastic to think 4000 Lincoln students will see the flyer. We're under no illusions - most will go straight in the bin (hopefully the recycling bin!) But for some it will cause them to seek out LUCF, or for others wonder if Jesus is worth investigating.

Last year a Christian American exchange student called Jesse arrived at Lincoln (who later in the year was involved in a horrific accident -details here), despite the advice of a Christian friend of his back in Idaho, USA, who'd said 'Lincoln Uni - don't go there, there are no Christians there'. Jesse's mate was wrong - there are Christians here; many less than Idaho maybe, but still God's people meet. We as LUCF failed Jesse's mate by not making our presence known enough, and that, in part, was the impetus for 4000 orange LUCF flyers in the LUSA registration packs.

All year LUCF has been taking opportunities to partner with LUSA (such as cleaning up after events), and now that support has been reciprocated, with LUSA supportive of LUCF events such as Jesus Week. Jesus Week 2008 is listed on the LUSA wall chart and LUSA diary that every student receives. We long for LUSA officers and staff to get to know Jesus themselves, and see this as a great step in that direction.

Earlier in the week Rob (TSCF Mintern in Lincoln 2008) & I spent a few hours with LUSA officers stuffing these thousands of registration packs with all the O week material; LUSA calendar, brunch bar, ads for washing machine hire, wildfoods festival, dominos pizza discount card etc etc AND LUCF orange flyer. It was monotonous work, but a chance for good conversations with LUSA.
So here's a photo of Rob stuffing those packs. The LUCF flyers are the bright orange ones.


This has been so encouraging and we praise God. We also ask God for the situation to change for our friends in the next uni, Canterbury University. My colleague Scott reports that it's a very different situation for the TSCF groups there.

Please do pray -
- For University of Canterbury Christian Union with their frustrations surrounding O week
- For LUCF to take the opportunities presented to them (they don't always realise how good they've got it!) in putting up flyers, speaking to newbies, handing out LUCF pens & TSCF bookmarks.