On Tuesday, November 28
th we began our trip to Sofia, Bulgaria at 6:00 a.m. Larry Sullivan, Guido
Moehler, Ed and Courtney Cantrell and Clint and I were part of the group that went. Thankfully this year Courtney and I were able to go because Eastern European Missions paid for a truck to take about 4,000 Bulgarian Bibles as well as the clothes to Sofia. Therefore, Larry had an empty van and was able to take more people.
The first day, we drove the entire day, going through the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, and finally stopping in
Szeged, Hungary at around 5-6 p.m. for the night. Once we got settled in our hotel rooms for the night we made our way back out to walk through the city and find somewhere to eat. We found a pretty good Chinese restaurant in which I believe we ended up each eating for an equivalent of 2 euros per person or something really crazy like that. (That is approximately $2.60 according to the awful exchange rate at the moment.)
The next morning (29
th) we left by 7:00 a.m. to eat breakfast and be on our way. Again, it was a long trip that lasted most of the day. We continued our drive through Hungary, crossed into Serbia and finally into Bulgaria. I think we made it there by around 6:00 p.m. We had rented two apartments for the week and we found the place and got our things settled in our rooms. That evening we had been invited by Tom and Sheryl Black, the missionaries there, to their house for dinner. It was nice getting a home cooked meal which tasted wonderful and getting to know them.
On Thursday the 30
th there was not much work that we could really do because every year there is always a lot of paper work that has to be done in order to allow all the clothes into the country and for us to give them away to people. The Blacks and other members of their congregation were trying to take care of all the paper work on that. So we basically had a free day to relax and see the city. We got up and had breakfast together and then headed out into the city.
One of the first things that I noticed and that was hard to believe about Sofia, is the number of casinos, expensive cars, the brand new shopping mall and the people walking around in very nice clothes who are obviously well off. The thing that is so strange about all those things is that just down the street or even across the street from any one of those things you can see buildings where people live that are falling down, people looking for food in the dumpster and people who are obviously not well off. It is amazing and hard to understand how such a contrast can coexist in one city.
Some of the other things that we saw that day were some really old churches from as early as the 4
th century. There were also some very beautiful cathedrals there as well. Just click on the picture above to see other photos of Sofia and the entire trip. One thing that we did visit was a flea market. A lot of people who sell things here make hand made items such as lace and tablecloths. There were also hand painted or carved things that were special to Bulgaria. It was hard to walk through there seeing the desperation in their faces that they wanted you to buy something from them. I'm sure some of them make their living at selling what they can make. We did buy a few special things there. It would have been hard not to. After lunch we had all decided that we would split up for a while. Ed, Courtney, Clint and I wanted to walk around some more to see the city and we decided to meet up with Larry and Guido later. After more walking and my knee began to ache we met up with Larry and Guido at the Mall of Sofia. For the evening we decided to go see a movie. We watched Casino
Royale, the new James Bond movie and we really enjoyed it. After the movie we went back to the apartments and tried to get some rest for the next day (we were still unsure of what would be going on at that point).
On Friday, December 1st we met again to have breakfast but Larry had gone to meet with the Blacks and other church members to work out the rest of the paper work. To make a long story short (oh wait, it's too late for that) the rest of us ended up going to see another movie because there was still nothing we could do to help. (We saw
Deja Vu which is also very good and interesting) That evening there was a Bible study at the Black's house so we all met there to get the news that the customs would not allow us to give away the shoes. We were allowed to give away the clothes, but none of the shoes. That day Larry had to dig out all the shoes and they boxed them up separately and put them back into the van for us to take out of the country when we left.
On Saturday, December 2
nd we got up, had breakfast and headed over to the Black's house. Right by their house there is a club that they rented the room to distribute the clothes in. It is much bigger than the room where they meet for church. We got all the chairs organized and labeled for the clothes when they came. We waited for a while for the truck to come deliver the clothes and then (as you can see in the picture above) the men threw all the bags of clothes in the room while the rest of us opened the bags and put them in their labeled places. We had them separated as far as men's/women's and shirts/skirts/coats, etc. We had approximately an hour to an hour and a half to organize all the clothes and eat lunch before the first group of people came at 1:00 p.m. Thankfully we got it done, but it was sure tight. I was in charge of watching the women's coats and making sure that everyone only took one. We had to make a limit to the people who came in first so that the people at the end of the day would also have the chance to get a coat too. From 1:00 to 6:00 we let in a group of 20-25 people for 30 minutes each and then they would leave and another group would come. At 6:00 p.m. we opened the doors and let anyone come in and take as many clothes as they wanted or could carry.
This experience had its really good points and hard points. One of the best things about it was seeing the smiles on the faces of the people who appreciated all that had been done to bring the clothes for them. They were truly joyful that God had once again blessed them with so much! I think one of the hard points was just seeing how much these people had and how happy they were. I know I have more than enough things and yet sometimes I am still not satisfied. I think this experience was good for me to see how God really does provide our needs when we trust in Him!
After the last group came in we cleaned up the rest of the clothes. We still had about 20 bags of clothes left, but the woman who owned the club said that we could leave them there and she would give them to the kids who come to the club. We were so thankful for that, it was an answer to another prayer! After cleaning up the Blacks took us to a Bulgarian restaurant and we ate some wonderful food! Needless to say, that night we were absolutely exhausted and tried to get some more rest for the next day's journey.
On Sunday, December 3rd we went to church and were able to see all of the people who had come the day before. Many of them had big smiles on their faces as they greeted us and continued to tell us thank you! Larry preached in English and one of the members translated into Bulgarian. At the end of the church service they presented us all with presents and thanked us for the work that we did. We had a short period of time to talk with a few people and then we were off again on our way home. Just a couple of hours down the road we arrived at the border between Bulgaria and Serbia. As we left Bulgaria we had to show them the paperwork for the shoes that we had to take out of the country and that part didn't take very long. They approved it and let us go through. Then we got to the Serbian border and had to wait for about 5 hours while Larry tried to get them to allow us to take the shoes through. Basically, no one wanted our shoes but no one knew what the laws were about taking used shoes through the border. We finally had a nice man give us the approval we needed and we basically would have to make sure to present our papers once again at the border as we left Serbia. We finally left and drove to
Novi Sad, Serbia and found the hotel we had booked for the night. Who would have thought that our hotel would have been so nice in Serbia. We told Guido that he did a good job booking our hotel and he said it was the only one he could find on the
internet. :)
On Monday, December 4
th, we drove more and made it to the Serbian/Hungarian border. Once again it was no problem for Serbia to allow us to leave with the shoes but as we got to the Hungarian border they didn't know what to do with us. We were actually hoping to get rid of the shoes, but no one wanted them in the other countries. Finally, we were allowed to go through and we ended up leaving the shoes in Hungary. We hope that some people who need them were able to get some. After that it was smooth sailing back through Slovakia, the Czech Republic and back to Germany.
As we crossed the border into Germany it was obvious that it was December because all the houses were lit up with the special Christmas decorations from the Ore Mountains (
Erzgebirge). It was so beautiful and so good to be back in Germany!
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