Ministering in Bulgaria

Andrew and I just returned from a week of working in Bulgaria, a former Soviet Union nation in Eastern Europe. Andrew taught a Nazarene History and Polity course for European Nazarene College to two students, and preached in the church on Sunday morning. I worked with our regional communications team to gather written and video stories of all that God is doing in Bulgaria.

God is at work in this economically depressed nation. But it is a hard place to work. Rampant unemployment has led to a mass departure of young adults and families who have sought jobs and a new, more hopeful life in Western European nations. This leaves children and elderly people to try and prop things up in Bulgaria.

With vast rolling plains and gentle mountains, Bulgaria is a beautiful and peaceful country on the surface. Underneath there is still a lot of pain caused by the struggle to transition from a Communist government to a democratic one. There are pockets of Roma (gypsy) communities that are generally segregated from the majority Bulgarian population, and the two ethnic groups have no love for each other.

In Montana, the poorest region and also the birthplace of Communism in Bulgaria, the Nazarene church has faced repression from governing authorities, resistance and harrassment from neighbors, and does its best to reach out to people who are involved in the darkness of the occult, are in bondage to alcoholism, or struggling to make ends meet due to unemployment. The congregation has become a beacon of hope for not only young families but the elderly and Roma people.

We sensed the powers of darkness hard at work to discourage, divide and resist God's people in their work to expand the Kingdom. We invite you to pray with us for the Church in Bulgaria, that it would be empowered by the Holy Spirit to overcome all spiritual and physical opposition and would be victorious in the name of Jesus Christ, who is greater than all who stand against Him.

Our communications team first spent time investigating a brand new compassionate ministry center that is being organized by the Montana Church of the Nazarene. The church is setting up this foundation to assist local people in accessing information and grants from the government and the European Union to start up small private businesses that will infuse new funds and energy into the local economy, and help families no longer be dependent on government welfare. We interviewed
two people who are building this foundation, and we also visited a Roma family that has been able to purchase land and start an orchard of their own, as a result of help from this foundation. The father of the Roma family said he is the first in 10 generations to own his own land. In a nation where people are too hopeless to dream about the future, this family now has hope and big dreams to grow their own agricultural business.

We also spent a day with a woman, Geroyka, who travels around to different villages with a truck filled with household items and clothing for sale, and while doing business with the villagers, she tells them about Jesus and plants churches. She then returns to the new church plants every week to disciple the new believers. She does this entirely on her own initiative and funds her ministry through her market business.

We interviewed the Nazarene pastor in Montana, Valeri, who has an amazing testimony, and who shared with us the exciting story of how his church was started and how it grew to more than 100 people who now worship in their own building, which in decades past was the home of the very first Communist mayor of Montana.

We also spent a few hours at a home for poor elderly people, where two singers performed for the residents and members of the church handed out chocolate and cookies along with hugs and smiles. That elderly home was a hopeless and not nice place, and it was a sobering experience.

Then we spent a day with Zhana, a young woman who overcame personal prejudice against the Roma people to work full-time with Roma children in a local government school, as well as planting churches among Roma families in the surrounding villages. We visited a small Bible study group of Roma for lunch and to see Zhana at work among the people who are open and hungry to hear each week about the goodness and love of Jesus Christ.

Roma are not typically open to strangers, so we felt incredibly privileged to be invited for food and fellowship without hesitation on their part.

It was a full and eye-opening week and we are grateful to have seen and heard not only the struggles but the victories of God's people in Bulgaria. I'm excited to share our videos and articles in the coming weeks and months. Thank you for your prayers for us while we were on this trip.

From the mountain to the valley

I am realizing that trust is a fragile thing. Even trust in someone as reliable and loving as God.

I believe God has never failed me. You'd think that would be enough to clinch my undying and unending trust in every circumstance I face. That trust by now would just come automatically. But it doesn't.

Some years ago, I went through a very dark, difficult time. I cried out to God to just be with me in that time of suffering and loneliness. I wasn't asking for a solution to my situation, or an end to the pain. I just needed him to sustain me in the midst of that experience. For some reason I still cannot fully understand, he seemed to leave me alone. For the first time in my life, when I needed him the most, I couldn't sense his presence or his comfort or his peace. I felt left to my own strength and resource, which of course were weak and used up.

That experience of seeming abandonment shattered a trust in God that all my life to that point had been unshakeable and reflexive. It's taken years of hard work between the two of us to build back that trust, but I admit, it's still a bit shaky.

Just yesterday, Andrew and I took a quick overnight trip to Zermatt, a village at the foot of the world famous and iconic Matterhorn, a sharp, toothy peak in southern Switzerland. Throughout the entire drive down late on Wednesday night and subsequent hiking day on Thursday, we saw bold evidence of God's hand on us, his provision for exactly what we needed when we needed it. Everything was working out perfectly when it might have gone badly (we could have hit hours-long traffic jams, missed the 11 p.m. train from Täsch into Zermatt, been locked out of our hotel. Thankfully, we avoided these possibilities). As we hiked, we were literally "on the mountaintop" and reveled in God's stunning and awe-inspiring creation. The weather gave us a few hours' window of perfection to get spectacular pictures and enjoy the scenery before it clouded over and we could no longer see the peak. I felt close to God, I experienced his faithfulness and my trust was increased.

Then we drove down from the mountain and back home into the flatlands of northern Switzerland. We left the "mountaintop."

Less than 24 hours later, I'm face-to-face with a brick wall of seeming impossible circumstances that are riddled with uncertainty, enormous obstacles and fear-inducing possibilities. My trust is in danger of faltering. Today, here "in the valley" I am reminded that trust isn't a feeling or a state of being. It's a choice. A hard choice that takes effort, strength and determination.

I don't know why we turn mountains and valleys into spiritual metaphors. We often say we're "on the mountaintop" when we're in a moment of spiritual excitement, wonder, deep trust and comfort or peace. When we're "in the valley" we're experiencing a lack of spiritual resources, or perhaps suffering and trials, difficult obstacles, disappointment, grief, fear or depression.

Well, that metaphor couldn't be more tangible to me than today. Yet, with the view of the Matterhorn fresh in my memory, and my clear memory of how he gave us everything we needed when we needed it, I am making the difficult choice of trusting God to work everything out to his good and perfect plan, for my good (not for my comfort necessarily but for my good) and believe that he is in control when we are so obviously not able to be.

Together

We've been through three months of daily German lessons now, and the class is taking a hiatus for the month of September. There was something I didn't expect to happen when we began on May 5, that a break is allowing me to reflect on.

I didn't expect to bond so much with our classmates. Hailing from Russia, Kyrgyzistan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Syria, France, Turkey, Spain, Thailand and Nigeria, the students in our class are all on the same playing field, the same team, with no one having the advantage of being on their home turf. We are all foreigners, learning a new culture and a new language together. There's something about making mistakes together, laughing together over those mistakes, helping each other through the difficult lessons that bonds people to each other. There is no room for arrogance or superiority for anyone when you're learning a foreign language.  We are all humbled by the obvious nature of what we do not know and cannot say without help. And everyone wants the others to succeed.

I was surprised by how our classmates worked their way into my heart. They are kind, gentle and generous people who love to share their lives, even when we cannot communicate in words, by pulling out their iPhones to show each other their homes, their families, their countries, and anything else that makes them who they are. They love to give hugs. I am humbled by their exceeding and unmatchable hospitality and generosity. It was hard to say goodbye to them for the summer.

I have been praying for them, for God to bless them and their families, as well as their integration into this new culture and land. I pray that someday we will all stand at the throne of God and praise Him together.