"You are real"

Every Wednesday Cameron, I and others go to the Roma community to do discipleship with the adults and life skills training and scripture memorization with the kids. Last Wednesday the community was being forced to move from the area of the field they had been squatting in and were unsure where they would move next. We were happy to find them in the same field this Wednesday when we visited. They were allowed to stay in the same field but had to move to a different location within it.
We walked through and talked to familiar faces and were shown the new area they're living. The children and I were about to leave the area to play when a woman called me to come over her tent. The woman's mother was sitting next to her with a pot of vegetables and some bread. When I approached the woman told me to sit and eat with them. I sat down and took some bread from her hand and dipped it into the vegetables and began to eat. Immediately the older woman began crying. I was completely taken off guard and asked my friend to translate for me and see if she was okay. She began talking and said "I see you all come here and you play with the kids and you smile at us but I wanted to know if you were real. And you are real! You are willing to eat from my dirty hands and eat my dirty food! God bless you sweet girl! I know you are real now. You don't look down on me!" I am crying as I type this out and relive this moment. Praise God! We had a very sweet conversation and I was able to share with her my story and how God loves us without hesitation. When Jesus sat at the tables of men, he looked past the hands that served Him and whether they were clean or dirty but rather looked at the heart of man. It's the stain of dirt from sin that Christ looked at and came to clean. Praise God for last night!

More pics of our last day!

More Pics of our last day of VBS

VBS!!!

I want to apologize because though I know many of you prayed and want to see everything, you will see only pictures from our last day. From our first month after arriving in Bulgaria we have been confronted with presumption that we will only stay here long enough to snap pictures to send home and then will be back in America in a blink of an eye. We know our heart and our dedication to be obedient to God, but others do not know us in this fashion and so for the sake of image we almost always leave our camera at home. The issue of taking a picture is not worth jeopardizing ministry opportunities, so please be patient with us as we know you desire to see what God is doing. We will always try to find a way to meet both needs; the needs of supporting churches back home and the needs of people here wanting to see someone who is genuine and not someone with a camera.

VBS was amazing! The first day was spent organizing groups and expectations before enjoying the activities that were planned. We managed to find an area of the field that had very little broken glass but the trade off was stinging bull-nettle plants! =) God answered our prayers for wonderful weather and the benefit of the field provided us the opportunity to share the stories with those who didn't come to church. God also answered our prayers for workers! There were 4 couples who helped man the group activities, pass out snacks, and help with worship time and crafts. God is faithful!
We saw two salvations during our week. One was a 14 year old boy who is an "adult" in their culture and the other was a 68 year old man who always seemed stand offish but was drawn in by a merciful Savior.
On Saturday we will have a family movie night to watch the Jesus film. At this time we will have adults ready with translators to help those desiring to follow Christ understand their commitment. We approach salvation slowly because we are very committed to giving the clear Gospel message and in seeing real transformations come from authentic relationships with Jesus Christ. Those who decided to follow Christ will be involved in discipleship training on Wednesdays at 6:30. Please pray for Saturday, we feel it will be a great time of harvest after much work!

It's a God thing!

I can't explain all that is happening in this Roma community but all I can say is it's simply and ONLY God! This Sunday was our first split service where Bulgarians came first and Roma attended in the afternoon. I will say Sundays will be an exhausting day for the families of the church who are dedicated to ministering in both services. Please pray for the children of our families because the Roma service starts at 1 and for alot of us, we have children who are spent by that point and need naps. God is good and He will allow us all to adjust to the needs of His church, but you can pray for our families. In addition, alot of these same families work at a church plant in the evenings and for us it meant waking up Ben during his nap and going again. With limited rest, you can imagine the sweet sounds of whinning that grace our ears all day. So pray for the workers to not grow weary and that we would see Sunday as just one day in a week that requires all of us to press ourselves a little further for the good of the body of believers and seekers. Pray also that co-labors would rise up with a heart for ministry and we can hand off some of these tasks.

Each Sunday more and more Roma come and each Sunday more accept Christ. Yesterday 5 adults accepted Christ, one being an elderly man =) Thursday of that previous week a woman who came to disipleship class accepted Christ. We are excited to see adults looking at Jesus, not as their children's God, but as their own Savior and friend.
Like the description of this blog states, it is absolutely nothing our pastor, our refreshments, our workers are doing, but is only God alone drawing people to Himself! We are just all honored to see it happening before our eyes. The neat thing is hearing testimony and seeing that the work we labor over and see no result of, can be witnessed by others years later. The Roma Christian leader who invests so much reading of scripture and evangelizing in the field during the week, became a Christian when he was introduced to Christ by a Bulgarian believer years ago in a different town. Your labor will always yield glory to God even when you do not get to witness the harvest for yourself.
Children's church is growing by leaps and bounds! Everytime we plan for a certain amount of children, twice as much show up. Every Sunday about 25 children show up for children's church. Saturday I went and purchased paint supplies for 25 kids, Sunday morning 41 children were anxious to paint! lol Our church is blessed to have people who have a heart for children helping in this ministry! I can not express how thankful I am that we are a team filled with love for kids coming to know their Savior.
On Thursdays we have discipleship for adults who have recently accepted Christ and who are seeking to know more about Jesus. Cameron and our Pastor have been faithful to meet each week, but our Pastor will be leaving for the states soon. Please pray that someone will rise up to help translate these discipleship classes with Cameron.

My Lord's Blessings

Since our first children's church it did not take long for opposition to begin. There are a few things you have to understand before I begin to update you on our last three weeks. First of all, Bulgarians are different and it would be wrong to assume based on this blog that they all act like the few I will mention. Second, these problems of racism still exist in America and in American churches so it will be wise not to cast judgement on the few who will be represented in this blog. The most important thing we can all do as Christ following Christians is to continue to have a willingness to check our own hearts with the Word of God and to reach out to all people, all nations and all tongues with the gift of eternal life.
So the second Sunday of children's church was just as wonderful of an experience as the first except this time I was made aware that some issues were beginning to stir regarding the amount of Roma attending the services. That evening, I was told that in two weeks the services would be divided, one for Roma at 9:30 and one for Bulgarians at 10:30. Though I had mixed feelings, I knew this decision wouldn't change anything for me, I would just have one more extra children's church. Unfortunately some approached the pastor for a meeting at the next service and proposed that Roma not be allowed in the church at all. This information resulted in prayer and fasting by some of you reading this blog and by some of us here in Bulgaria. I was heart broken by the information. A meeting was held last Wednesday and despite really poor arguments why Roma shouldn't be allowed in church a decision was made to have Bulgarians attend the first service and Roma attend the second so the Bulgarians do not come behind the Roma and catch their germs, lice and diseases. =( With this being the case, I don't know that we would have felt comfortable following John the Baptist who was a filthy wilderness dweller or Jesus who touched VERY contagious people with leporsy, spitting, foaming demon possesed individuals, a woman caught in adultry or a woman with a blood disease. Oh the depth of scriptures that flood to mind right now! With just a small reading of scripture we find evidence of God's love testifying to the contrary of this fear to love the unlovable! May we see people with eternal vision and see their lostness and not their dirt!

Well speaking of dirt, dirt and more dirt. We went to the Roma community last Wednesday. Those sweet woman were continually wiping dirt from my knees and off of my children. It was okay for them to be filthy but they continually served us by making sure we weren't! Unfortunately their attempts were lost on our two boys! The children who live in that field day in and day out were 10 times cleaner than our boys by the time we left!! The bath tub water was BLACK! lol Though we tried, we just could not clean their shoes and have dedicated them to be the shoes they wear when we go out to visit their community.
The picture above is of dirty hands holding life in them! You know, if you could have seen the dirty heart God had to take in His hands to bring me life when He touched me, then how could I ever attempt to keep my hands clean after that! I did not deserve a HOLY PURE God to get His hands dirty to save me and bring me eternal life, so how can I now expect to keep my hands clean? May I enter His gates one day with filthy hands and feet! I will serve Him even if it's hard and dirty because it will never compare to what He did to bring me life!
Since the short period of time the Roma have been attending, two men accepted Christ last Sunday and tonight a woman who came to the discipleship training accepted Christ! God is so amazing!

Two added to the Kingdom!!!

One of my requests from the Lord has been to get a children’s church started here. I hadn’t found my place in church here and I really wanted to work with children. Last week our Pastor asked Cameron if he would ask me to do a children’s church this Sunday. OF COURSE was my answer and I have been excited for this day all week. I prepared and got my supplies and brought enough stuff for ten kids. When I walked into church I saw about 25 kids that would be coming to the first children’s church! Whoopsi!! =D Today at church 26 Roma attended the service and when we went into the room for children’s church the Roma sat on one wall and the other children sat opposite of them. I began reading our story of Elisha being fed by the ravens in 1 Kings 17. We learned about King Ahab and the rain not falling due to their worship of false gods and then each child participated in acting out each character in the story. It was amazing to see the children interact and see their laughter overcoming cultural barriers of race. Oh how I love how children can make love the simplicity it is meant to be. Afterwards we divided into discussion groups and the older kids dug deeper into the Word. We talked about Matthew 6 and how God will provide and knows what we need and our need not to worry. Teaching on Matthew 6 was a huge reality check for me because most of the children I was teaching spend time with their parents digging in dumpsters to make ends meet. There was a weight of responsibility teaching something so relevant that I had to check my own self and ask “Do I really believe this?” because I’ve never had to rely on this scripture like the children I am teaching do. Despite that, I could teach Matthew 6 in confidence because I know when we seek God first all of our needs are met!
At the end of our service, the translator was speaking with a boy who was very attentive during all of the teaching. She brought him to me and said “This boy wants to know God and believes in Him. He wants to be saved.” After speaking with the boy and gauging his understanding of what he said he wanted, he and another boy accepted Christ. They made a commitment to study the Word and be discipled and so this Tuesday they will meet with Cameron and begin to study.
Tonight we had our first children’s church at a church plant across town and it too went amazingly well! Only due to the glory of God because He has truly stripped me of anything I was ever confident in! Both churches desire to continue the children’s church and in the next month or two I will start classes for women who want to be trained to take over this ministry so that I can fade out and hand it over to them. The church we attend will begin a Roma service at 9:30 and a Bulgarian service at 10:30. Though this idea still seems foreign to me and I would love to see them all together worshipping as one body, I know that I am the foreigner who has no understanding of culture and will trust God to change hearts in His time and will focus on just simply loving all and following in obedience my One True Amazing God!

Please pray for the two boys who accepted Christ today. They live in a tent community in a field with their family and other Roma. Praise God for the Roma believer amongst them that brings them to church! (FORGIVE me! I have too many names swimming in my head and I am not going to write down names that I’m not sure of! I can’t remember their names right now)

Please pray for their spiritual growth to be strong as they study the Word with Cameron.

Pray for all the other kiddos who are attending children’s church in the morning and at the church plant in the evenings.

Please pray for God to put desires in the hearts of His people to take over this children’s ministry so that it can prosper under their leadership and under the sweetness of their cultural knowledge and language ability that I will never be able to fulfill.

Please pray that each door God opens, we will walk through with discernment, wisdom and NO confidence in ourselves!