Friday - June 24
Arrived at the Sofia Nat’l airport around 11:40am with everyone successfully receiving their luggage. Woohoo! (scratch that, we had two that failed to receive their suitcases..but they have them now so no worries.)
It didn’t hit me until I saw Christo and Vania (the preacher of a church of Christ here and his wife) waving to greet our crew as we were walking out of the airport…the memories of last year’s trip came back immediately and everything around me now feels like home. Familiar faces and places. Sadly, we aren’t staying at the infamous Easy Hotel again. Our hotel this year is the meeting place of worship for Christo’s church, conveniently. It’s nice.
Dinner tonight included the best salad ever, that is, shopska (spell check) salad which includes cucumbers, tomatoes, and some kind of white cheese (goat, perhaps?). We also had cheese fries and several types of meat.
And now, exhausted and full, we are all just going to chill at the hotel this evening and sleep after the short devo.
Everyone is stoked. Everything is going wonderfully. The next two weeks shall be epic. Pray for us, loves.
Saturday - June 25
And today was a day just like any other. Or, rather, quite the opposite.
The hotel provided us with an epic breakfast this morning consisting of bread, eggs, meat, cheese, fruits, cereal, etc; the fruit here is the best ever, seriously. Martin, our translator, gave us a brief tour of the surrounding area. I remembered many of the locations and such from last year, especially the ancient cathedrals and other church buildings. We happened to walk in during Mass and during the baptism of a baby. (No worries, I have video clips of both events.) I really enjoyed the different portraits of Jesus and the apostles we’ve seen…they depict Him pretty much the same as Americans do, but with more random hand gestures and fancy headwear. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside said buildings, unfortunately.
We noticed that there were about 10 people (9 of which were women) present at Mass. Rick informed us that Sofia has a population of approximately 1.5 million people.
After our mini tour, it became destination: park. for the remainder of the day until dinner time.
Since about half of us have experienced this before, there was more confidence in our group to reach out to the local teenagers who watch us with utmost curiosity. God even cut us some slack today and many of them approached the crazy, random crowd of about 15 American young people first. We basically just had to be there and opportunities came in many different faces, stories, and conversations. It’s been estimated that we got to talk to and hang out with about 25 new Bulgarian friends this afternoon. The first-timers on this trip also got to meet Denny, our amazing Bulgaria friend whom we met last year. It was discussed in our devo tonight about how it’s no accident that we’ve come across these certain people. God wants them to either experience or hear something we have to say. Please pray for God to be the breath in our lungs; there’s no doubt that we need a Voice louder than ours.
Peace and much love to each of you.
-Julia
PS- did I mention that we stumbled across some Bulgarian folk dancing upon arrival at the park? :) pictures soon to come.
Sunday - June 26
So many different experiences today. Every single person we’ve met, every conversation that’s taken place…almost every step we’ve taken has resulted in us recognizing it as a “God thing”. The Dude is moving in quick and obvious ways and it’s honestly kind of overwhelming me. I’ve been praying like crazy for God to take over every move I make and use every ounce of me to demonstrate His love…and all the sudden, He’s sweeping me away in ways that are so much bigger than I could have ever planed or thought of. Please pray for God to be our eyes. For real.
On a more informational note,
We’ve learned that Christianity is definitely not common here. Many of the people we’ve met in the park view “church” as the shiny cathedrals and the chants that the priests mumble while wearing their delicate white/gold robes and waving around wooden crosses. A group of 3 people in their twenties told us that there is a sadness amongst the Bulgarian people. Like there’s something missing. Many are cynical/downcast about all the communism that has happened and the fact that cops can be waved off by slipping them some money.
They said that they can see something different in our group’s eyes. They feel kindness and they feel comfortable talking and coming with us to our hotel for worship. Worship of which they’ve never experienced before…they couldn’t understand how there could be any singing besides what a priest does at Mass. People here don’t talk to strangers or even really acknowledge them when they walk by or whatever.
A woman at church tonight told me that she hopes I can get her grandson to have an interest in church again. I told her we’re working on it.
Always with hope,
-Julia
Monday - June 27
Fairly intense day at the park. In case you haven’t creeped on my Bulgaria photos from last year, what we do at the park is this: play games like badminton, kill ball, catch with football, volleyball, old lady ball, and sometimes other random games. The goal is to make connections with, well, mainly teens, but we will have occasional adults who want to teach us the correct way to hit a volleyball and such *cough* Christian *cough*. Sure, words are hard to understand when they aren’t being spoken to you in your native language, but there’s no denying the connection made between smiles, laughs, and the joy that comes from hilarious moments that occur when trying to whack a ball with feathers (and keep it under control) in random gusts of wind. Luckily, many of the people who agree, and many times ask, to play with us know some English and can at least have some small talk conversations with us. Also, teens typically mill around in groups of 3-5 (on average) and there’s usually one or two who is quite fluent with English. This year, we had little flyers made with the address to our hotel, and our schedule of evening events that are designed to let us hang out with our new Bulgarian friends and also include them in our singing/praying at the end (if they want to, of course). We give them these flyers which have English on one side and Bulgarian on the other. Three of our new friends, Stella, Bobbie, & Bobbie’s friend with a complicated name, came to our game night this evening. Though they had a glorious time laughing at Becca and I’s lack of UNO skills, they didn’t feel comfortable being included in our circle when we began singing. They seemed to enjoy listening at least, and Becca wrote in one of her posts from tonight that “I asked him [Bobbie] if he would come back tomorrow and without hesitating he said “Yes!”
I’ve been thinking about the parable of the mustard seed like crazy today.
Jesus once said “How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade.”
I like the fact that, by definition, when a mustard seed grows, it doesn’t just make one small blossom, but completely covers the entirety of its surroundings.
Love really is the movement.
-Julia
Tuesday - June 28
I’m pretty sure the consistent cloudy + rainy weather affected my overall spirit today. I just haven’t been feeling it and I’m glad today is over. After reviewing it all in my mind, I can now see that Satan has been tearing at my mind in forms like disappointment, jealousy, incompetence, low tolerance, feeling like whatever I say is useless, and rest that follows such feelings.
But honestly, today was pretty incredible when viewed through eyes that aren’t weak like mine. Our translator, Martin, told us that it was a miracle that those three bulgarians showed up yesterday evening. Bulgaria is a country in which no one trusts anyone. Especially a sketchy group of American teens, ha. Martin said that we shouldnt get discouraged; once they trust us, they will trust what we have to say. Which is the truth about many humans, eh? Granted, some will just follow blindly……..
10 of our new Bulgarian friends (including the same 3 from yesterday) showed up tonight. Crazy. Please pray for our group to have patience and to rejoice at the small/huge things. God does enter the world through smallness after all. Shoot, the son of GOD was born in the ghetto for pete’s (or, rather, the whole world’s sake). He uses what a young boy has to totally quench the hunger of five thousand. A country was set free because God worked through a dude whose mother sent him down a river in a basket when he was a baby.
Anyways. I’ll cease my rant. But at least I know that blogging is officially a good method of mental therapy.
Praying for all of you back home. Good night.
-Julia
Wednesday - June 29
I forgot to mention that I kicked a pigeon yesterday.. Which almost qualifies as much of a success as me managing to play a random Bulgarian’s (Philip’s) mariachi acoustic guitar and sing “Baby” by Justin Bieber today. Hehe. I love how different each park experience is from day to day. After scaring away some people with our lack of volleyball skills, Becca and I decided to just ‘go for it’ and talk to a group of about 8 school-age guys. As usual, it turned out to be a good thing…almost all of them knew a lot of English as well as Spanish, which I was thrilled about. We especially hit it off pretty well with a dude named Blag who acted super interested in coming to our get-togethers and/or movie nights.
We also met a girl at the park named Yana (spell check) who was consistently blowing cigarette smoke in our faces and kept busting out laughing excessively, as if trying to get attention of some sort. Her eyes were about as wild as her blue and yellow striped high-top converses. She latched onto our group, reciting Bulgarian raps all the way back to our hotel and getting herself labeled as sketchy. The only silence that came from her was when tears ran down her face during worship. We talked about love, loving our enemies, redemption through love, forgiving because of love, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how easily humans can connect through pain of past experiences and current struggles. I also like how God reveals Himself through the most unlikely people. As cliche as that sounds.. Thanks for all the prayers, guys. We see and feel them daily.
-Julia
PS- I’ve successfully had Bulgarian ice cream every day so far. Heck yes.
