After a 48 hour day of travel, we finally arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria… greeted by beautiful mountains and fields of endless sunflowers. We spent the night in a hostel and woke up early the next morning to take a four hour bus ride east. We were picked up by our host and shuttled to our living area, a humble church on the edge of a quiet city (well, maybe it’s just quieter than usual because its Ramadan). After we dropped our bags we headed up a nearby hill to play games with some gypsy children! They are beautiful people, with the brightest eyes I’ve ever seen. They do not speak English, but that wasn’t the hardest part… in Bulgaria nodding your head means “no” and shaking your head means “yes”. It took us a while to understand why kids were shaking their heads so much when we asked them to play with us! We were told that gypsy children do not get very much affection, and it wasn’t very long before kids were hugging and kissing us all over, hoping to receive that same love back.
Sunday morning we headed back up the hill to give a short message and pray. We spent about two hours the night before preparing a skit on the story of the Good Samaritan. We sang a few songs and the kids seemed to receive the skit and message well. Afterwards we had the privilege of praying over almost every child and adult who came. The spirit was on that place! Looking into those kids eyes I saw world changers and kingdom shakers! I am so thankful for the time that we had with them. Even though we were only with them for a few hours, it was hard to say goodbye!
On Monday, we woke up and packed. We hopped on a bus, driving two hours south to a town about 4 kilometers away from Greece! Our new host picked us up and took us to a nearby hotel. Can I just say, I am daily in awe of the Lord’s provision! This hotel that we are staying at is beyond gorgeous. We are on top of a hill that somewhat overlooks the city. The roofs are lined with beautiful orange tile. The walls are made of bits of stone and stucco. Everything is green. There are flowers everywhere! We ate our lunch outside on this beautiful patio under a cabana. Half of our team went to the grocery store to pick up some food for the next few days and the food was even cheaper than we expected! The Lord is just lavishing His love upon us! I wish that a picture could capture the beauty of this place, but it simply cannot!
This week we are doing construction at our hosts house! Today (Tuesday) we worked on clearing his entire backyard of weeds. He plans to have us (hopefully) help lay the foundation for the FIRST ever CHURCH in this city! How exciting!
Pray for our team.
Pray that we will remain healthy, have continued energy, have peaceful spirits, joyful hearts, and a boldness to proclaim truth!
Pray for the gypsies.
Pray for their health (we prayed for a lot of babies with skin problems and eye diseases), pray for their walks – that they would continue to draw closer to God, and for their spirits (that they would continue to have hope for the future and that their trust in the Lord would increase)!
Pray for our current host.
Pray that he will continue to be excited about the Lord’s provision and faithfulness. Pray that as this church gets built that the Lord would be preparing the hearts of those who will come.
This month, for the safety of those whom we are working with, I have to be a bit more cautious with what I post. One thing I am learning: the Lords word never comes back void (Isaiah 55:11)!
P.S. I realize that this post is a bit deceiving… there is no sunflower picture… it had trouble uploading. I’m sorry about that! Feel free to check out my instagram (amberly_rae) for a ton of pictures of my race!
