So some folks from America, Canada, Romania, Germany, and England were sitting in Bulgaria, eating some Chinese food, when an Israeli walks up and says “You’re not from around here, are you?”…yes, that just happened. Honestly, what is this life that I lead?
We recently jumped down with our Romanian contacts to our friendly neighbors in Bulgaria for a couple days, essentially scouting out church planting potential. Just in the simple motivation behind the trip, it was kind of neat for me to see. A church, recognizing that this neighboring country has a similarly minuscule Christian population and that there are Romanian speakers throughout, cutting down the communication barrier, sees this as reason enough to load up some church members and jump the border, not exactly knowing what the days will hold.
One of the Romanian church members, Marian, had gone ahead a day or two early to scope out potential opportunities, but had largely hit some dead-ends in searching for contacts to serve as translators to the Bulgarian-speaking population. That is, until right before we all showed up, and he comes across a nice little lady. Reminiscent of my grandma, our connection was an awesome divine appointment. She had felt a specific leading that morning to head down to the park, where Marian had conveniently met her, filling her with an incredible joy to come across Christians in her largely non-Christian neck of the woods. She was nearly moved to tears as we were all introduced, and our team was more than eager to respond as she cried “I need to get a hug from a Christian!”
It was a great couple days, and encouraging to me in a number of ways. Our potential point of contacts were two-fold: the Romanian speaking population, which was largely the older generation, and the English speaking population, largely younger students learning the language in school. The bulk of my time was engaging groups of teenagers, making for a lot of great conversations and connections. Having done ministry with high schoolers in the States the last four years, I always enjoy the opportunity to see how these students on the other side of the world are far more similar than they are different. In many conversations, the overarching theme seemed to be a lack of hope, largely from a desperate economy and physical struggles. It was a joy to recognize together that all the supposed wisdom of this world fails to satisfy this deepest longing of the soul, and that all the good works or scientific evidence can’t stand eternal scrutiny in offering any true hope. We aren’t cosmic accidents and we will never attain perfection on our own, but we are beloved children created in the image of our loving Father, made righteous by the blood of Christ.
Matthew 12:21
