SEND BG Winter Retreat

The SEND Bulgaria team held their winter retreat in the near by town of Borvets over the weekend of February 16th. I, Marc, helped plan it – but we had a lot of help, especially from a friend of ours, Albaina, whom is Bulgarian – very helpful when you have to book hotels and don’t speak the language.

It was a great time for the team to get together and reconnect with one and others. SEND BG is actually made up of two teams: the UTF team, which Lisa and I are a part of, and the “Sofia” team – which is a church planning team. We do hold monthly prayer meetings together – but we don’t have a lot of time for just socializing.

This weekend wasn’t just about socializing – we also had great facilitated discussion about our teams and what it takes to have an effective team functioning within a safe environment. We feel it was a great “bonding” experience with the “whole” team.

We also had a day to go sledding/skiing. I had planned on going skiing, however the fog was so bad you couldn’t see more than 20 ft. ahead of you. At my age – I wasn’t up for dodging people, trees or buildings. The benefit was that I got to go sledding with Drew – we had a blast!

One of the highlights of the trip was having dinner at “Baba Lozas,” This dinner was at the small home of a Bulgarian grandma who prepared a Bulgarian cuisine for all of us. In full Bulgarian dress she served wonderful fresh bread, salads and the main dish of pork, potatoes and vegetables baked in a ceramic pot. Baba Loza even gave us a personal concert as she sat in the corner spinning wool. It was a great time.

Dancing Drew

Drew dancing at a ski resort in Borovets Bulgaria.

UTF gets a face lift

It was fun to use my design skills once again to do a minor touch up job to UTF, the seminary Marc is working at. We were able to paint with 5 of the students. The previous institutional feeling of the school, which before was all white walls with grey floors, now has some pleasant color to it. I would inadvertently miss the floor you exit on, as each floor looked the same and you exit from the first floor, though inevitably I would end up in the basement.


Now, the first floor entry area is a golden wheat color, the second floor is green and the third floor is a terra cotta red. It was fun to see the students get excited about the makeover and show up on a Saturday. They seamed to be happy with the new colors.


We are planning a follow up day of painting to work on the rest of the corridors as now they look a bit shabby next to the fresh paint. Hope you enjoy the picts! Lisa

TERRORIST ruin my ski trip

A friend and I decided to go down to Bulgaria’s largest ski resort in Bansko on Friday for a short two day ski trip. We arrived at the lifts early Friday morning to only find out the slopes were closed due to a “Bomb on the Mountain.” Information was slow to come in, but we eventually found out that some political ecological group sent a letter to the media and to the ski lifts that they had planted a bomb on the sloped in retaliation to all of the new development in Bansko, as it was destroying nature. (so apparently it is okay to destroy “men” just not the “nature”)

We spent Friday hanging out and visiting some Bulgarian friends, in hopes to ski on Saturday. We arose early to hit the slopes only to find another closed day due to the bomb threat. They decided to plant their own charges to release some of the snow – hoping to detonate any potential bomb and remove the threat of an avalanche.

So it’s not the type of Terrorism you hear on the nightly news – but still terrorism none the less. It looks as if it turned out as everyone expected – that this political group was only looking for media attention – as no bomb was ever found.

We returned to Sofia very disappointed – as Bansko had beautiful weather, but no skiing this weekend. Maybe God was protecting me from myself – who knows. But we do hope to get out again some time soon.

To read more about the actually news story, click here: http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=76247