Bulgaria month has come and gone, and my team has wrapped up another great month. Here are some of the highlights of what went on in March!
Cleaning: Every morning we continued to make the new church facility useable. Handrails received fresh coats of paint. Walls were scraped smooth to receive a fresh coat. Floors were swept, scrubbed, and re-scrubbed. Mountains of trash were thrown away. Much dancing and singing took place, and an old rundown building was made new again.
Church Services: A majority of our afternoons and evenings were spent visiting various gypsy churches in the area. These people have their own unique style of music and worship with modal traditional tunes running together as one long song for 15 minutes or more. Though most of these churches are extremely poor and often cram 40 people into a room smaller than my college dorm room, we experienced incredible love and generosity. One church even provided us dinner and would not eat until we had first. Every service around two or three members of my team shared testimonies or something the Lord had given us to share with the Church body. It was always incredible to hear from each person and see how the Lord used them specifically in ways each church needed.
Nursing Homes: Some afternoons were spent at nursing homes in the area. Our Bulgarian friends would sing then one person from my team would share a testimony. Afterwards, we sat and talked with the residents learning about their lives and praying over them.
Youth: The youth of the church were also a large part of our ministry. We spent significant time with them every day since most of them did ministry with us. We attended weekly meetings and other special events including an aerospace engineering themed birthday party and a movie night which included us introducing our Bulgarian friends to “The Sound of Music.” So many great friends were made this month, and I will miss them all!
The Big Adventure: Now on the World Race plenty of unique adventures occur and the biggest one by far in Bulgaria occurred the day we had to purchase train tickets to Bucharest. In order to prepare for our travel day to Romania, we had to purchase the tickets there. Within the past year, the ferry that crossed the Danube had closed, and a new bridge had been constructed. Our contact had not been over the border since its construction, and so we assumed we could walk considering how close the ferry was to the train station. Little did we know what lay ahead for us. The new road diverged away from the town before looping back around to it. The walk ended up being 10 miles! It was definitely one of the longer walks I have ever taken and one I will not soon forget.
And here is a little video of that bridge-crossing day for you to enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't normally eat potato chips for dinner. You will have to watch the video to know what I am talking about.
