Lion's and Tigers and Bears- Oh My!

A day at the zoo:

We were privileged to go to the zoo with Marc’s coworker, Tony and his wife and daughter, Alena and Iouana a week ago Saturday. After getting somewhat of a grim outlook from one of my Bulgarian friends, I was pleasantly surprised, as the zoo was clean and a fun place to spend an afternoon. It was wonderful after 8 months of being in Bulgaria to meet Tony’s wife and daughter, they are both delightful. The animals at Sofia zoo are much more interactive than any other animals I have seen at other zoos. I think mostly because people feed them (for much of Sofia, just think America of the 70’s.)

It was a fun experience to get to the Elephant (слон-slone in Bulgarian) display at the actual zoo feeding time. Drew and Iouana were captivated for 20 minutes as they watched the elephant eat a whole, large watermelon. I was pretty impressed as well. The elephant picked the whole thing up with its trunk, and then crunched it in half. Drew still talks about it every time he see’s a picture of an elephant. The hippo (хипопотам-hipopotam) was also very fun. It would open it’s mouth wide for people to throw food in. At first I didn’t know whether he was hungry or had had a bad day as he looked quite grumpy with his mouth wide open. Marc thinks he looked straight out of the game hungry hippo. I will have him refrain from trying to feed the hippo marbles the next time we are there. The bear (мечка-mechka) was entertaining as well. He almost looked human as he sat almost straight up on a rock waiting for food to be thrown down to him.

Hope you enjoyed your trip with us to the zoo!

Take care-

Lisa

NFL in Bulgaria

Many of you know that I am an avid football fan. From the many years of playing myself (a long time ago) to living in an NFL town for the last 5 years – I have really become addicted to the sport. One of my largest difficulties in living in Bulgaria is that anytime I mention football they all think I am talking about a bunch of guys who chase around a black and white ball and will get hurt if the wind blows too hard.

So my mission this summer. (Ok- admittedly a self-indulging “side” mission) was to find a way to watch US Football this fall. None of the Bulgarian cable or satellite companies carried any US Football.

I then had to turn to the wonderful world of technology – the internet. I have a good friend in Kansas City whom has a “Slingbox” which allows you to watch TV via the internet. He also has a Tivo unit set up – thus I can watch and record KC cable from here – in Bulgaria. The quality is not the best – but being half way around the world – I cannot complain. I have also found sites on the internet that will allow you to download football games after they have all ready been played. So I have been able to find a fix for my addiction.

As a result I am bringing down the other missionaries with me. Just last week I held a Monday Night Football Party on “Wednesday” night. It felt like back home – a bunch of guys sitting around, goofing off and watching football – real football. I actually invited some of my Bulgarian friends – for some reason they did not seam that interested.

Gotta go… Bears coming on at 8.

The Last Hike

Hopefully it will not be the last hike of the year, but last weekend Lisa and I took the opportunity to go with some friends to the Rila Mountains for an all day hike.

“Rila is the highest mountain (range) in Bulgaria and on the whole Balkan Peninsula. It is a part of the Rila-Rhodope Massif and occupies its north-east end. Rila seems to be a piece of the Alps thrown into the heart of the Balkans with its 130 Alpine peaks above 2000m, glacial valleys and lakes… the most famous and scenic of all - the 7 Rila lakes.” (bgtravel.com)

We left Drew with a baby sitter and we headed out with our friends, Paul and Erin Smith. Paul and Erin are avid hikers and were kind enough to take us along. We hiked above the tree line and the views were spectacular. Of course pictures never do it justice, but you can check them out at the link below. We hiked up to the 7 lakes and ate lunch at a “Hizha.” A Hizha is a shelter/hotel/restaurant up in the high elevations for the mountains. Bulgarians will hike for days from hizha to hizha. The only down side is that our little walk ended up going 8hrs. Our legs were dead - it literally felt as if my hamstring was pulling away from my leg bone by the end of the trip. All in all, it was a great trip and we hope to do it again soon.

Pictures: http://sheppardbulgaria.shutterfly.com/action/

SEND Regional Conference

This year SEND International (the missions organization we are with) held their Regional conference in Ohrid Macedonia. Macedonia neighbors Bulgaria to the south west and we arrived by bus – a 10 hour one way bus ride from Sofia to Ohrid.

The conference was great, the trip home was not. Our bus turned into a traveling petri dish of sickness. The night before we left the conference, three girls came down with “flue-like” symptoms – by the end of the 10 HOUR bus ride home, over half 20+ had the same symptoms of varying degree. I (Marc) unfortunately become one of them. Half way through the trip I got the chills, then the aches, then the fever, then the chills again – you know how it goes. Fortunately I was able to keep my food down, while an unfortunate few were not. The last 5 hours of the bus trip were very unpleasant, but we finally got home at 12:30am Tuesday. I have since recovered, but it was a rough couple of days and I and others had “lingering” effects for about a week. Praise God that Lisa and Drew were able to avoid this mini-plague.

The conference went well. A church from Pennsylvania came over to help run it. They provided the worship, the speaker/teacher and children programs. The purpose of the SEND Conference is to bring all the missionary families from South/Central Europe together for fellowship and to discuss SEND business matters. The countries represented were Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Hungary, Check Republic, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey. All teams gave a country report and shared what was going on within their countries and ministries. SEND also has some business to conduct such as elect new area council members and a new Area Director was moved into office. I enjoyed this piece as I was able to see how SEND operates as an organization and how their leadership structure is put into place. I was also very nice to meet all of the other missionary families. There were 30 family units there – most of them with kids. The supporting church from Pennsylvania also brought about 15 people.

We greatly enjoyed the worship and teaching. It did not hit me until we were there singing that this was the fist time in 8 months that we were worshiping God in our own language with other believers. The teaching was also very practical to our current situation – we appreciated it very much. It was a great time to “re-center” on an emotional and spiritual level.

Small World!

We discovered my parents in Des Moines, IA have neighbors from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian family’s parents visited Des Moines, from Bulgaria, for 3 months this summer and were able to meet my parents. My parents gave them our contact information and the mother, Margarita, called us when they came back to Bulgaria. Drew and I met her for coffee and then went to their apartment. They live about 6 blocks from us, just on the other side of our local grocery store. I was able to speak to her all in Bulgarian and get to know her a little bit. We look forward to more encounters with them. We hope to get to know them better and we pray that my parents will be able to get to know the Bulgarian family there in West Des Moines because of this connection. Who would have figured – two different families, half way around the world, actually live houses/blocks from each other. Crazy -

Lisa