let me set the scene:
garrett and i had spent a great week with team rise up. we had a great time in vidin, going to gypsy churches, having fantastic conversations with the team, and even getting TWO homemade pumpkin pies (thank you frank!). god is abundant with his blessings! through a too-long-to-explain-now series of events, we ended up making a last minute decision to go visit team wonder in sofia the next day. after talking to the team leader that night we found out they weren’t actually in sofia, but 2 and a half hours from it. so the next morning he runs us through how to reach them from sofia and garrett and i hop on our bus to the capital.
[insert four hour bus ride here]
we get to sofia and the lord blesses us yet again by having the bus we need leaving in 30 minutes. just enough time to relieve full bladders and grab a healthy travel-day meal (aka snickers and chips). and after some slight confusion over our tickets being sold to us for the wrong day and a few questions about if the allman brothers are from texas, we hop on our bus. again, god blesses us… this time with wifi on the bus!
[insert two and a half hour bus ride here]
so the plan was to get off before our bus actually got to it’s final destination at a place called “palmite”. however, anyone we asked about this place had zero clue what we were talking about. and the bus wasn’t making any stops along the way. i should have known we were in for an adventure when google maps couldn’t even find anything for us. come to find out, “palmite” really just means random-place-on-the-road. right about the time we realize this, we look out the window to see ourselves zoom past a blond-haired texas boy (our team leader) and his contact, standing literally in a random spot on the side of a bulgarian road. perfect.
via my dying cell phone, the contact insists that they will pull the bus over if we tell them. so i proceed to the front of the bus where our “tour guide” was sitting and half-charades, half-speak, “can you stop the bus?”. her response: “ten minutes”. i think she thinks i’m asking when we will get to our last stop, and try to ask again (this time with more emphasis on charades). her response: “ten minutes”. great. accepting defeat, i walk back to our seats and before long the ridiculousness of it all has us cracking up and theorizing how this all would end.
but you see, when we passed by the contact and our waiting team leader, they hopped in the car and started following the bus. the contact, unsatisfied with the customer service of this bus and being a take-chrage kind of guy, proceeds to take things into his own hands. he pulls alongside the bus and motions to the driver to pull over, then gets in front of the bus, puts on his hazards lights, and quickly slams on his brakes. yep, he pulled the bus over. garrett and i half grabbed our stuff, half sat in shock as we watched the events unfold. “is this really happening?” was blurted out more than once amidst our hysterical laughter, i’m sure of it. the man knocks on the bus door and calmly tells the driver “i have 2 people on your bus i need”. the two of us grab our stuff, fly out the door, and grab our big bags from under the bus faster than you’ve ever seen.
so god sent us a bold man to save us from the unstopping bus and has blessed us abundantly here with team wonder ever since. good food, our own beds, hot showers, tons of laughter, absolutely amazing people, and a really fun story to share with you.
God is so good.
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loose ends to tie up:
— turns out the allman brothers are, unfortunately, not from texas.
— google translate just informed me that “palmite” actually means “palm trees” in bulgarian.
