Hey guys!
I apologize for taking so long to post another blog, but here it is at long last! Unfortunately, because I put it off so long, we really do have some catching up to do.
I last left you guys in Albania, where I was working at a children’s camp run by Lightforce International. After staying there for a few days short of four weeks, my squad bussed northeast to Sofia, Bulgaria, arriving there early in the morning on August 1st. While some teams were continuing on to work in Serbia for the month, my team was one of five which hopped off the bus in Sofia and soon headed for the nearest McDonalds to set up an all too typical World Racer headquarters.
Unfortunately, at this point my team and one other had still not been given the contact information for our shared ministry partner, meaning that we had arrived in Sofia with literally no plans and no idea of where to stay. After spending over half the day wandering around the city in an attempt to find a cheap hostel which had vacancy for 12 people that night, my fellow team leader and I were finally able to locate a nice little place, just North of our McDonalds headquarters, which became our new home for the next few days.
Eventually we managed to get ahold of our ministry contact this month, who was a local pastor and seminary dean named Tony Elenkov. After a short conversation with him at his church, we got directions to the out-of-session seminary where we would be staying for the next month, located a 30 minute metro ride and a 30 minute bus ride outside of Sofia, within a suburb called Bankia. Much to our delight, both our accommodations at the seminary and the town of Bankia itself were more than we could have hoped for. Bunk beds, warm showers, a kitchen, a washing machine/drier, and a balcony offering a view of the beautiful Bankia, all contributed greatly to making us feel comfortable and at ease in this new life.
Our ministry in Bulgaria can be divided into a few different categories. In addition to Tony, we partnered with two other churches that he put us in contact with. At one of these churches, we offered some backup to a seriously understaffed children’s English/arts school, teaching classes, cleaning the facility, and supporting the staff however we could throughout the day. The other church was happy to have us serve them by cleaning their basement (a pretty serious endeavor, which anyone who has seen the average church basement is quick to understand), and sharing our testimonies with their youth group, and later on in the month, at a youth conference that their church hosted.
However, while I did join in with this work where needed, I primarily worked under Tony’s father, a Bulgarian bishop named Vasil Elenkov who had some very ambitious plans for how he was going to put the men to work this month. After staying at the seminary for a few days, Vasil asked me to follow him into the backyard where he had a job for me to do. We walked over to an old chainlink fence, supported by concrete posts, absorbed by nearby trees and vines, which separated the seminary’s land from their neighbors. With a wave of his hand, Vasil simply said, “It must go!” Boy, were we just getting started.
After giving me instructions on the dismantling of the fence, Vasil told me that in its place he wanted us to build a retaining wall to prevent the ground from continuing to slide downhill, and thus jeopardizing the seminary’s foundation. The project which he described to me in those few moments was laughably huge; he wanted us to dig a trench, two feet wide, 40 feet long, and 4-5 feet deep in parts, at the completion of which we were to lay a rebar enforced concrete wall, shored up with all of the displaced dirt. I laughed, he laughed, and the other guys laughed when I described it to them the next morning…but we started digging.
About three weeks later, we’d made some great headway on the project, but our time in Bulgaria was coming to a close. I wish that I would have taken the time to snap a few pictures of the process, but I’ve never been much of a photographer. However, I think I’ll always remember that trench project as one of my favorites of the race. Hanging outside all day, swinging pick axes, shoveling dirt, and sharing conversation and encouragement with a couple awesome guys really led to some great memories being formed. At the end of each day we felt two things: tired, and spoiled. “Hard work”…Bulgaria has made me wonder if those words are not, for all their use, yet another contradiction in terms.
So after about four weeks in Bankia, our time was up and we trained to Brasov, Romania by way of Bucharest. We will be having our first debrief here in Brasov, which is a time for all of us to relax, hang out as a squad, and get reunited a bit before we all get shipped out across the country of Romania.
I’ll have a blog post coming soon (hopefully), which will give you guys more of an idea of what I’ll be up to this month. In the meantime, know that I miss (some of) you dearly, and hope the best for you!
“Arise sleeper, and Christ will shine on you!”
Jeffrey Roderick
