A night with the Gypsies

Whoa, we just had crazy/cool experience. We just spent the evening with a “Gypsy” family singing praise songs, praying, struggling to communicate and eating cookies and benitsa (bread and cheese). Nothing like getting right into the culture.

In Lisa’s last post she mentions how our taxi driver invited us to go to church. Actually he told us he was picking us up and since we did not know how to decline – we just said Da (yes). This was to be our first truly “Bulgarian” experience with no Americans holding our hands. Service was great. It was at a Bulgarian Church of God and not too unlike some services we have attended back home. The only “somewhat” down side is that they gave us too much attention. We looked to be the only American couple in about 500 people in attendance. So they wanted to parade us on stage and have me say something – something most all of them would not understand without the use of the translator. We realized they were only giving us the attention because we are Americans, as I kind of doubt they bring every visitor up on stage. Anyways – it was cool to attend and worship with them.

We may have made another cultural “faux-pa.” We were told when Bulgarians ask you to do something during the day – they are actually asking you to spend the whole day with them. After church they wanted us to come to their house. Unfortunately we had not discussed this senario and told them we had to get home to put Drew down for his nap – which was true. But they asked if we were free Monday evening and we told them we were – so they said they would pick us up. To do what – we really didn’t know.

Stoiam, the taxi driver, came to picked us up in his little Russian car, a Lada, and took us to his brothers house. It was a nice home and they laid out a table of goodies for us. Other younger children were there to play with drew. It was Stoiam’s family, his bothers family, and some other relation – about 15 of us in all. We all had our Rechniki (Dictionaries) out trying to piece together dialects that others could understand. It is amazing how much you can communicate through humor – basically everyone laughing at everyone as they butchered the other language. Then they started singing many Bulgarian praise songs and once they started singing Amazing Grace my heart leaped. God’s saving Grace transcends all barriers. They prayed for us and it was a great evening. Scary and exciting all in one.

The Gypsies are actually second class citizens in Bulgaria. They are a bit darker skinned – like those from an Indian decent. We did not even know this until they started making fun of each other for being gypsies. It all clicked once I heard them and paid more attention to there features. They have now invited us to go to the “gypsies church.” We’ll let you know how that turns out.

Please keep Stoiam and his family in your prayers.

Lisa is in the top left.

Stoiam is just to the right of Lisa, balding and in a black jacket. 

We've arrived!

Picture 1: view of the mountains from our apartment
Picture 2: View of the street from our apartment

Hello all! As most of you have heard via our emails, we have arrived in our new home and are doing well! We just got internet set up in the apartment so have just begun answering emails and this marks the beginning of us updating our blog on a more regular basis.

Our apartment, though dilapidated looking on the outside, is quite nice and spacious on the inside. It is furnished and we're shocked that we even have a dishwasher. The best part of the apartment is that about twice a day the haze in the city lifts and we have a view of the mountains from our living room, a welcome sight in a city where most everything is grey and dirty. I am hoping for a better perspective on the dreariness of the city once spring comes!

Most of our days right now are filled with language study. We are trying to get our mouths used to trying to say so many consonants in a row. We're starting to get the new alphabet down (Bulgarian uses Cyrillic which has 30 letter in its alphabet.) Because of the different alphabet, note that anything we write to you in Bulgarian will be spelled phonetically in roman letters as we don't expect all of you to learn Cyrillic! :-) Here are just a few of the many words we've covered in the last couple weeks- priyaten den: Have a nice day, jeveesh: we live, jeveeya: I live, momche: boy, zdreveyte: hello, hlyab: bread.

We are excited that we will have our first truly Bulgarian experience (meaning we won't have another person who speaks English to hold our hand) on Sunday! We happened to meet a taxi driver who drove us to our Bulgarian classes who speaks a tiny bit of English. On our fist ride with him we struggled through a bit of conversation with our almost non-existent grasp of Bulgarian and his small knowledge of English. It was funny because we made no reference to why we were in Bulgaria, but halfway through our taxi ride he held up the Bible that was in his passenger seat and declared, "Christiani." At the end of our fist ride with him we took down his cell number(called a gsm number in Bulgaria,) and continued to have him drive us to our classes. On Thursday, we asked him about his church and thought we would write down the address to go and try to visit sometime, but he immediately got excited and asked to pick us up on Sunday. We'll let you know how it goes!

Today we had one of my favorite experiences thus far, we found our local Bakery! Wow, you have not had bread this good! The bakery is only 3 blocks away so we walked there as a family today. The bread was still steaming as we left the bakery. Drew loved that we broke it open on the way home and gave him some. He was like a little bird chirping bread, bread bread, as we couldn't feed it to him fast enough! I will not buy bread from the grocery store again! Also, you can't beat the price, for a hot loaf of bread and some rolls with chocolate on them (excellent as well) we paid 1 leva which is equivalent to 60 cents US. It may be habit forming!

We love and miss you all!

Lisa

And we are off...

It’s kind of weird to realize that I am writing you all for the last time from the comforts of our US home(s). Hopefully the next email you receive from us will be from Bulgaria. All of our bags (boxes) are re-packed and we are loading up the van tonight. We are then off to Chicago tomorrow morning, we’ll spend one last evening with family and then head to the airport around noon on Sunday. Our flight is at 4:30pm so hopefully we will have all of our luggage taken care of by then.

We have been so busy this last week getting all the last minute things ready (I know… you’re all saying I had 4 months) that I really have not had any time to just reflect on what’s really happening. Maybe this is all by God’s design – as our human natures tend to freak out about things like this. But as of right now – all emotions are on a cool level.

I/We have learned so much over the last four months – don’t worry, I won’t break it all down now. The largest thing I have come to experience is how generous and loving our family and friends are to us. I have often become “one-tracked” about all of this and have been very selfish at times – but you have all put up with me and loved me all the same. “Thank you” is not enough – but please know that you are all very loved and appreciated.

God does nothing by accident or coincidence. God is definitely in this – and that brings us great peace.

God has put you in our lives and we are so very grateful.

Please join us in prayer by praying for the following:

• Getting everything to the airport
• Luggage – that we are allotted the extra bags and that we make the weight limits
• The flight – a safe and comfortable ride (specifically for Drew)
• The Transfer – we have 35 minutes for our connecting flight in Munich – pray that we and our luggage make it
• Arrival – Pray for the SEND team and all those who will be helping us adjust.
• The mission – Pray for God to perform His work through us.

God Bless! We Love You!

We’ll catcha on the flip side.

The Sheps