Hello everyone! It's nice to hear from all of you, I think about all of you and wish you could be by my side enjoying this beautiful land God has given us. Bulgaria is an amazing place! We work hard all week long and on Saturdays we get end early to go explore the country. Last Saturday we went hiking in the mountains. We made our way through some gorgeous scenery, and stopped off at a waterfall with a swimming hole. Some of the group swam and the others skipped rocks and caught frogs, but we mostly relaxed. It rained on us on our way back to the car, but it was still in the mid seventies so it felt great. Our Hosts here are so amazing, I can't say enough about them. We have been continuing our work around the place we have been staying, trying to further Rueman's vision of what this place is going to be. It makes me feel like we are adding another piece to the puzzle. We don't get to see the immediate effects of our labor, but I know we are building a sanctuary for future people to come and have a place to rest in the Lord. My group and I are blessed daily, and I know it'sbecause we have such a strong support system back home that is praying for us, and I thank you so much for your love and support.
OK tangent, but funny, while my group leader and I have been clearing brush (which the natives like to call the jungle). We have come across many odd things in our digging. I have found more shoes, sweaters, shirts, jackets, broken bottles of alcohol, broken plates, spoons, and cow bones in one area that I can't even keep count. I have a few theories, none of them factual, none of them logical, and it's a two-parter, but follow me with this if you will: First thing, the plates and spoons, they must have not had a dishwasher and they had to hand wash everything. Second, the Bottles of alcohol, we are talking several liquor stores could be filled if you pieced each of these back together. So I assume that the folks who inhabited the land before Rueman, drank so much alcohol they forgot to do the dishes and they piled up so high that they turned into Sarah Silva Synthia Stout, and by the time they woke from the drunken haze they realized the dishes had mold growing from them, and it would be best to throw them out with all the bottles. "The cows and the clothes." So I have dug up several Jaw bones, which leads me to conclude there is more than one dead cow here, Bones upon bones. The deeper I dig, and everywhere I dig, I keep finding bones. Huge bones! At first Logan and I were convinced we had found a dinosaur bone, and briefly imagined careers as paleontologists, but then realized shortly after that we were holding cow bones. The jawbones reminded me of Samson taking on a thousand men with the donkey's jawbone, and I stood there trying to imagine how he did it; Do you think he stab them all, or threw it? I imagine that he killed some of them with his bare fists as well, but that's another story and another time. As well as all these bones that we found, we found all sorts of clothes and shoes. Not pairs of shoes, mainly single shoes and about twelve different styles and sizes. There are either a lot of people walking around with one shoe on or these people have been living with cows that like to play dress up.
OK tangent, but funny, while my group leader and I have been clearing brush (which the natives like to call the jungle). We have come across many odd things in our digging. I have found more shoes, sweaters, shirts, jackets, broken bottles of alcohol, broken plates, spoons, and cow bones in one area that I can't even keep count. I have a few theories, none of them factual, none of them logical, and it's a two-parter, but follow me with this if you will: First thing, the plates and spoons, they must have not had a dishwasher and they had to hand wash everything. Second, the Bottles of alcohol, we are talking several liquor stores could be filled if you pieced each of these back together. So I assume that the folks who inhabited the land before Rueman, drank so much alcohol they forgot to do the dishes and they piled up so high that they turned into Sarah Silva Synthia Stout, and by the time they woke from the drunken haze they realized the dishes had mold growing from them, and it would be best to throw them out with all the bottles. "The cows and the clothes." So I have dug up several Jaw bones, which leads me to conclude there is more than one dead cow here, Bones upon bones. The deeper I dig, and everywhere I dig, I keep finding bones. Huge bones! At first Logan and I were convinced we had found a dinosaur bone, and briefly imagined careers as paleontologists, but then realized shortly after that we were holding cow bones. The jawbones reminded me of Samson taking on a thousand men with the donkey's jawbone, and I stood there trying to imagine how he did it; Do you think he stab them all, or threw it? I imagine that he killed some of them with his bare fists as well, but that's another story and another time. As well as all these bones that we found, we found all sorts of clothes and shoes. Not pairs of shoes, mainly single shoes and about twelve different styles and sizes. There are either a lot of people walking around with one shoe on or these people have been living with cows that like to play dress up.
We had another great church service today. Our other host (Nosko probably not how you spell his name) is a retired pastor, but he did a sermon for a church in a neighboring town that we were fortunate enough to be a part of. It was really nice to hear his take on Christianity, and good to hear him finally speak more than a few words, for he is a man of few. One thing that really stuck out to me was him speaking about having a persistence to get closer to God and his word, and believing what the Bible says fully. He spoke of a man who had been a Pastor in Bulgaria, and how he was being asked questions about the story of Jonah and how he was swallowed by a whale. The critics where saying that a whales throat is far too small to allow something as big as a human to be swallowed. The man said if the story was in reverse and it was Jonah who had swallowed a whale. He would still believe the story because it's in the Bible and it's God’s word. It made me think about this man’s faith, and how awesome it must be to have so much of it. He said you can't just pick out the parts of the Bible that sound possible; you must have faith that all things are possible through the Lord (Matthew 19:26). That was a big blow to my reality and seems to go against everything logical, but the man is right. I just hope that my faith can start becoming as strong, and I can let go of my own understanding of possible and impossible. A friend of mine told me "don't put God in a box,” easier said than done, but it's something I'm working on, and I have been trying to break down my walls, to try and imagine God’s unfathomable greatness and wonder.
out front of a monastery
waterfalls everywhere here
Alex, Rueman, and Nosko q'in up some dinner
