COV LIFE BLOG

Friends of Internationals Update – Spring Dinner “Taste the World”

Imagine throwing a dinner party for over 100 of your closest friends. You want to talk to everyone and everyone is trying to talk to you, but now something is getting spilled or someone needs help with this or someone needs you to tell them that. It would be a crazy night, but man would it be worth it. This was definitely my experience at our most recent event with Friends of Internationals.

Each semester we do a large dinner for the students. This semester, we had around 100 students and 15 volunteers in attendance. The theme of this semester’s dinner was “Taste the World.” We had food representing India, Greece, Cuba, Sweden, and many more nations. And as part of that we had students get the opportunity to show off some food from their own country. It really was a treat getting to taste food from all over the world. And in addition to the food, we gave away gifts cards to Target, Wal-Mart, and the Oxford Exchange. Because if there’s anything college students like more than free food, it’s free money.

So many students have come up to me either during or after the event to thank me and to tell me how much fun they had at the dinner. But way bigger than just having a good time was the opportunity to begin to invest spiritually in new ways through the relationships that continued to be cultivated during this night. Out of this event, we had 12 students express an interest in visiting a Church or attending a Bible study. And we had another 6 students express interest in celebrating Easter with a local family. We have consistently found that personal relationships are the best way to reach these students and our hope would be that many deep relationships would be formed out of this night.

As a church, a significant portion of our mission statement involves how we display the glory of God through the gospel renewal of the nations. In honor of this worthy desire, God has sovereignly placed us within feet of 1,300 international students at the University of Tampa and given us opportunities such as these. But without laborers being faithful, the harvest remains ripe but

So pray:

1) God would use this night to bring many people to himself

2) God would give us more opportunities to build relationships

3) God would raise up laborers for this great harvest of international students at the University of Tampa

4) God would show you how he would have you to be one of those laborers reaching the nations in our city