For being such a little tiny town in the middle of the mountains, Dobramirka's a happening place. There's a little person on a four wheeler, an Orthodox Rabbi, literally one horse in the town….and then there's Nosko, our ministry contact….
Last week, before we got here, Iva, our main ministry contact told us "Didi and Nosko aren't big practical jokers so be conscious of that side of them."
…………….Sure they're not big practical jokers….just crazy…………
Amongst millions of other examples, Nosko had Myers and I take all the cardboard boxes and plastic bottles out of the basement today, we assumed for recycling. We proceeded to break down all the boxes and flatten all the bottles, at which point in his broken english, he pointed at the burn pile up the hill and said "fire!".
Surely he just means the cardboard….He has to just mean the cardboard….
We brought the boxes up and tossed them on the pile…. Nosko proceeded to soak them all in Benzene and then drop a match on them. The whole thing went up like an atomic bomb and here comes Nosko spinning and waving his hands wildly while escaping the fire, laughing the entire time. As if this wasn't crazy enough, he then prabs the plastic bottles and Styrofoam (apparently there's no green policy in Bulgaria), douse these in Benzene as well, and throw them each individually into the fire, creating more fireballs, and then walks off down the hill leaving a dumbstruck Myers and myself to watch the fire…..which is now huge and starting to catch the completely dried out plants and trees on either side of the pile on fire at an alarmingly quick rate.
Next thing ya know we have this old Bulgarian house wife chewing us out in Bulgarian saying what we can only imagine was "You American fools, can't you see that it hasn't rained in so long that the ground is cracking and now you've started a huge fire? Get a hose on this stuff!!!" Which of course neither of us could really understand but pretty well caught the gist of.
Now keep in mind by now this fire's prolly six, seven feet high at this point and a good 15 ft x 25 wide so what does Nosko do? He runs up, chuckling the whole time with a small quarter inch garden hose and hands it to me like it's all I could ever need. (It had one of those heads on it that makes it do a spread spray, thus being even less effective) So here I am, in shorts and a tank top, one hand in the pocket, the other directing a garden hose at this big ol fire and listening to an old woman yell at me in Bulgarian thinking "this is the best birthday ever!!!".
Long story short, we got a couple more hoses and a bucket line up there and managed to get the fire under control and then put out and between that and Charles the goat and amazing family and community here, it was definitely the best birthday of my life and I'm so greatful for where I'm at in life. There's honestly been plenty of times where I never even expected to make it to 23 so this has been a great achievement in my life and one I don't regret looking back haha. Thanks so much to those of you who've donated for my birthday, and if you missed my last blog about that, it's definitly not too late to do just that! I still need about $2,800 to be fully funded and nothing would make for a better birthday gift than having just that. Any amount helps, be it $5 or $2,000.
More updates soon, sorry I haven't been writing too many blogs, like I said, it's kinda a sleepy town but this too shall pass:)
