Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Month one. Bulgaria. 

Well it has definitely not started out the way I expected it to.

For months, almost a year really i have been mentally preparing myself for the worst conditions you can think of. I was ready mentally to go five days without bathing before not being cool with it or myself. Sleeping in places that most would cringe at and turn away from if giving the choice.

But that’s not what the first couple weeks brought. For two weeks we where housed and located in a tourist city by the beach called Varna. Did you catch that TOURIST city? BEACH? We also have most of the comforts here that we have back home in the States.

All I could think when walking the city the first week, if Im being honest…. Lol was “holy crap I feel like I’m back home in the States, but with a beautiful European twist to it”!!

Week one in Bulgaria we worked outside of Varna in a gypsy village, just investing time and love on the kids.

 

At the end of the week we went to some of the homes in this particular village to just pray over and talk with some of the gypsy family’s.

So that was the physical part of the week. Each one of my teammates found ourselves in a mental and spiritual battle and Monday night was the throw down. 

We where up till after 2:00am in the morning praying and facing this stuff. At one point my team just felt the presence of God dwelling in the room with us, then I instantly felt a spirit of fear latch onto me and when my team mate asked me a question I couldn’t answer her, I felt really hot, clammy and couldn’t stop tears from just streaming down my face. I was starting to freak out inside and thinking that everyone around me was crazy. I went from the room everyone was in, into the very small kitchen. I just clasped on the floor and started pleading with Jesus to free me from this and my brother was just impressed on my heart so heavily, I started pleading for him and his life too. My team mate Nicole came into the kitchen to find me, because she was scared for me. We talked. And prayed and I just felt a peace and calm come over me, and a coolness.

So that was the start of a week that’d prove to be crazy! But crazy good.

At training camp we where told that for the first couple months we’d be on a high… What high???? There has been no high. I feel like me and my team has been put through the wringer over and over again!

So after our spiritual adventure, me and two other team mates got slightly molested by two boys in a village we where ministering at.

In this village we where doing work at the church there. Its an old builden that needs LOTS of work and repair. The little yard behind the church was completely over grown and had the brick remains of an old building that use to stand back. 

My team and I cleaned up the ruines, racked and weeded the back yard. At our lunch break a family from the village came to the church asking for prayer for their deef and mute son. We surrounded the boy and his family and prayed over them. But the father kept talking. He kept repeating how he believed that the reason his son could not speak or talk was because of his sins. Because he has no work and can’t provide for his family, he drinks a lot everyday in hopes that it will kill him. Absolutely heart recking.

My team kept asking if we could pray for him. Pray that he would be free from the chains that bind his life. But he continued to refuse prayer for himself and asked only that we’d pray over his boy and house. 

At this point our contacts at this church we where working with asked if he’d like to take us to his home so we could pray over it and his family. He enthusiastically said yes! So we walked with him and his family to their two bedroom, fly invested, achole stanched home.

Before entering the house, Andrea, one of our contacts here, whispered to us girls to be aware, alert and watchful of our selves and each other because the boys here at this home have been known to grab and get very physical with girls, especially foreign ones.

The warning was great, but immediately upon entering one of the boy’s grabbed my team leader Amy and pulled her into a tight hug while rubbing his hands all over her chest. Fortunately it did not last long because a other team mate, Jessica, saw what was happening and pulled her away. After a little while I felt things getting tense and just the absolute reality and sadness of this place and these lives was hitting me hard. My team mate Nikole pulled me outside and asked if I was okey… I lied and said “yeah..” but she knew and we talked a little. That conversation was cut short because we where soon joined outside by the older teenage boys of this house. They started telling us that we where very pretty and beautiful, then one of the boys reached and sort of caressed my ear. I stepped away, and things got uncomfortable real fast. They started making gestures with their hands, running them up and down their body’s insinuating that we where beautiful. Me and Nikole decided this was starting to go to a place we didn’t want to be at, so we decided that we where going to try to get back into the house and join the other members of our team again. 

But there was a slight problem… the boys where standing in front of the door, kinda blocking the entrance. So we did the only thing we knew how to we stood up strong and went to push our way through. The older boy grabbed me to try to pull me into a tight hug and whatever else he was imaging in that head of his. I pulled away, with the help of Nikole pushing me through the door. He then grabbed her arm and would not let her go. She tried to pull away while saying “No.. No”, as I went back to grab her the boy released her and we rushed inside. Every thing at this point was starting to get very tense, the rest of my team that was inside finished praying and then we left. 

 
SO, that was day one of week two.
 
Day two we took the kids of this village and played games with them all afternoon. I enjoyed that, but I was also hurting for these children, over the brokenness of their lives and families. My prayers for them is that God would just raise them up and make himself known to them. That he would place people in their lives that could mentor them and poor the love of Jesus into their lives daily. And that they would see and know that God is real and alive today. Moving and breathing life into whatever His spirit touches.
 
Day three. My team, I and our contacts where going to the town square to sing and try to talk to people. When we got there, there was this group of older woman siting in the center of the town on the broken pavement pulling weeds. My team leader thought it’d be a good idea to plop ourselves down beside these lady’s and start picking weeds with them. So we did! It was cool to see these women start to smile and laugh. Now heres the part of the story that gets exciting!
 
Ready??
 
About an half hour to an hour later I looked up from where I was picking to see three big police officers walking towards our direction wearing expressing that said “you don’t belong here”. 
We picked up on this vibe and all stood up. They started demanding to know where we came from? Why we where here? and where was our identification? Ah oh, crap! None of us had our passports on us, only our licenses. As they collected mine and the other girls, we discovered that some of us didn’t even have that on us. They started to write stuff down and began to make phone calls as well. Then like an angle sent from God a woman from this village who was also close friends with our ministry contacts here, walked up the street. With a look of concern she marched up to these officers and demanded to know what was the problem.
 
After some conversation with her, they told us to leave immediately and that we where not to come back without identification. Later our translator told us that they wanted to arrest us because we didn’t have our passports on us and supposedly us six sweet faced girls looked like possible terrorist! 

 
That ended our time in that village. We traveled back to Varna. We got the next two days off before going to an other city to work at a Christian summer camp. 
 
However Thursday I started to feel real crapy. I had, had a headache on and off all week, but by Thursday morning it was almost unbearable. 

 
Buy Friday morning I had worsened badly and my team leader Amy and team mate Nikole (who’s a nurse by the way 🙂 ) had to take me to the hospital. After be willed all over the place and when some test where done. I found out that I had Bulgaria’s Summer Viras. I was put on bed rest for two days, giving a diet and some meds and told to come back if things got worse. Long story short I did not go back and by monday morning we where on our way to our next weeks ministry. 

 
This month has felt like two months or more. My team has already been through so much together,  and through all of these experiences written here and the many others that took place this month , we have been stretched, challenged, seen God’s spirit clearly at work in our lives and in the lives of the people we’ve come in contact with. We are bonding and growing in faith, spirit, love and truth. 
 
Yes Bulgaria has a heavy oppression over it. But God is moving here. He’s stirring and awakening hearts and opening eyes.
 
This was a tough month, but a good one!
 
My team and I left Bulgaria today and are now traveling to Albania, our next country!! We will be meeting up with the rest of E-Squad and get to spend this month all serving together!!
 
Please continue to keep me, my team, and the leaders over us in your prayers.