Bulgarian Theological Seminary

Yesterday, today and tomorrow, we are teaching our basic leadership course at the Bulgarian Theological Seminary in Sofia. Our class consists of about 12 Pastors who are finishing up their formal education and will graduate with a bachelor’s degree next week. They are a very experienced group. One has been in ministry for 32 years and the others from about six to 20 years or so.


Our interaction has been very good and it is a lot of fun to work with them. They have been very quick to understand leadership because they are doing it. It is interesting to see how quickly people who are actually leading understand this material as compared to those who have never been in a leadership role.

Blaga Vast (Good News) Church

Today, October 24, we taught our course on “Creating a Sacred Marriage” at Blaga Vast Church in Sofia. Blaga Vast means Good News.

This is a church that we have been attending when we are in Bulgaria for quite a while. Our friends, Peter and Ellie Tachev, who ran the school for orphans where we met Stanley and Velin, used to attend here and they brought us here seven or eight years ago. When in Sofia, we have been attending here since then.


For years, the church has been meeting in a theatre building and working on their own building. They have been very creative at raising money for the project. For example, since they had more land than they really needed for the church, they built an apartment building on the excess land, sold the apartments and used the profits as a major source of funds for building the church. The building is nearing completion and next week they will move into the smaller hall and begin holding Wednesday night services there. They have already finished a large classroom (where we held our seminar) and administrative offices. They are finishing each room on the interior one at a time and will probably take another year or more before all is complete.


Two years ago, at their request, we began teaching this seminar. It was so well received that they have starting inviting people from the community and from other churches. Now, we are working together to use it as an outreach tool.


Many of the 40 to 50 people in this group were from all over Bulgaria. They are part of a divorce-recovery ministry that works with divorced people to try to help them heal from their divorces and meet new people. The ministry is about 15 years old and has helped about 50 couples remarry. The other people were from the church.


Our translators for this session were a young couple who are interested in being involved in a marriage and family ministry in the church. This was their first time to translate for us and they did a great job.

Meet Dinko

On Thursday, October 22, we were back in Sofia and taught our marriage seminar overview to a small group of people from a number of churches around Sofia. Our objective here was to give them a sample of the one day course and encourage them to go back to their churches and talk about it. We hope that when we come back the next time we can have a much larger participation and do the full day course.

We did the class in the COG missions building in downtown Sofia. This is a beautiful, new, multi-million dollar building that was constructed as a center for ministry to the entire country of Bulgaria. It is huge. There is space for several large churches to meet (all at once) a full restaurant or feeding facility, a large hall for conferences, numerous offices and support areas. We held the class in one of the smaller classrooms.


Our host was Dinko Zlatarov, President of Care For All Ministries and a dear friend. Dinko is one of the most talented (multi-talented) young men I have ever met. In addition to that, he is one big ball of energy. What a combination! He is a joy to work with and a solid, reliable partner. We have been working with Dinko and his wife, Petia for several years now and we look forward to doing bigger and better things with them in the future.

Zlatitsa

On October 21, we went to Zlatitsa, a very small village about 20 miles from Sofia. This was probably the worst area we visited in terms of the squallier. However, it is very small so the sensory impact is not as great as some of the others we have seen. Most of the people here live in what I would call huts, not homes. Many live in just one room. Again, there is no running water, no plumbing and the streets are mud. Flies are everywhere (and other biting bugs). Chickens, dogs and cats run in and out of the homes. The children are filthy and there is much disease.


Many gypsies are not married; they just live together. The pastor here is a Bulgarian man who serves these people without pay. He lives in Sofia and drives here to serve them. He started with five people and began visiting each home. Now he has a church of about 60 people or so. He is teaching them about the importance of marriage (legal marriage) and has been taking the couples to the authorities and getting them legally married after doing a wedding service for them. Now, most of the couples in the village are married. The town officials are amazed at this; it defies all of their preconceived ideas about gypsies.


The church itself was formerly an abandoned stable. They have gradually “remodeled” it and made it into their church.


Once again, we taught the introductory session to our marriage seminar. Because of the pastor’s work among them, these people really “got it.” For them, it was not so much new information as a confirmation that what they were doing was right and pleasing to the Lord.


This was our last night “on the road.” Starting tomorrow, we will be in Sofia for just over a week. We will be teaching different topics to four different groups of people, but all are in Sofia. That will be good for us. Traveling to teach every day is very tiring, even though the distances are relatively short.

Levski

This morning, October 20, we left Stara Zagora and drove for about three hours through the Redobe mountains to Levski. This is a medium sized town in the southern part of Bulgaria. The Pastor of the church here is Nickoli. As is true of all of the pastors that we have met on this trip so far, he works full time at another job and serves the church for nothing.


As we did yesterday, we distributed some bags of food and clothing to some of the poor people in the town before the seminar. While they were obviously poor, they were not in nearly as bad shape as the people we saw yesterday. It reminds me that, “poor” is a very relative and limited term. The materially “poor” in our country are “rich” by comparison to these people. So of course, “the poor will always be with you” is absolutely a statement of eternal truth. However, the materially poor can still be rich in other ways. The joy of the people we saw yesterday is proof of that.


In contrast to yesterday, this church was a very nice building and the people were clean, well dressed and obviously educated. Most were ethnic Bulgarians with a few gypsies. Once again we taught the first session of our marriage course. It was well received by the people and we were invited back.


Due to our remote location, we were invited to stay at the Pastor’s home which was very nice and quite comfortable. This was a very nice change from hotels.

Tvurdista

On October 19, we went to teach in Tvurdista, a large gypsy ghetto about an hour from Stara Zagora. The living conditions of the people there are very primitive. There is no running water and no plumbing in the homes at all. Most have a well but the water is often polluted and all of them have outhouses for toilets. Since the homes are crammed together side by side, you can imagine what it is like. The streets are mud and the houses look half finished. Many have no windows or doors, only curtains.



Before we went to the church, we took a bag of food and a bag of clothes to a number of families. They were all so grateful to receive these basic necessities you would have thought it was Christmas.



Despite their almost desperate circumstances, the people were joyful in their praise and worship. We had a great time singing and dancing with them before we started our teaching.


We taught the introduction to our marriage course because the Pastor, Vesko, requested it. He said that most couples do not have a legal marriage so teaching about the marriage relationship was more important than leadership. The people seemed to receive it really well and the Pastor was very complementary.
After we finished, they insisted on serving us a meal. Although they are extremely poor, their hospitality was very humbling and we couldn’t refuse.



Once again, being among these people makes us almost ashamed of our abundance. We could not help but marvel at their joyful worship in the midst of such grinding poverty. It proves to us, once again, that money cannot buy the really important things in life.