I thought the adventure of my very first mission trip would start when I got to Bulgaria. Little did I know the whole experience would start from the moment I ‘signed up’. When I made it known that our team needed to raise funds and that one of the things we were doing was holding a Dessert & Silent Auction Fundraiser people started volunteering to bake and donate items for the auction. Support poured in from family, friends, co-workers and my church family. 

We left for Bulgaria on July 1 and returned on July 18. Those were a whirlwind 18 days. We were a team of 7 Canadians and 1 Romanian. To briefly encapsulate those days and do them justice is difficult. It was very emotional to experience so many things in such a short period.

The countryside is beautiful and we were surrounded by the Balkan mountains almost everywhere we went. The cities are beginning to show the effects of North American culture with malls and neon signs. The rural areas we travelled to were very poor, but behind dilapidated walls were often beautiful gardens, especially vegetable gardens, and people were so willing to share what they had. The remnants of the Communist era are seen in the monuments in the towns and cities and on the faces of the older people.

You probably wouldn’t call a visit to an orphanage a ‘highlight’. Nor would you call many parts of the trip ‘highlights’. We visited Gypsy (Roma) camps where people live in derelict conditions such as abandoned factories on the outskirts of the capital city and the children don’t go to school. We hugged and played with children. We distributed bibles and toys and love and encouragement to young and old. We were invited to praise and worship and pray together. We had Bulgarian friends taking us places and translating, but we sometimes had to find ways to communicate without a translator. When we were singing in English, Bulgarian, Turkish and Romanian at the same time were we even singing the same song? It didn’t matter.

I learned a lot. It’s true what they say about life. It’s all about the journey.