Sunday in Sofia

What a day!  I'm blogging this on Monday morning, as Sunday had already expired when I finally got to a point where I could.  The day started out with breakfast in the hotel lobby.  For some reason, they were playing some type of techno-trance music, and I commented that it seemed a little early to me for that sort of thing, which caused a German guy at another table to snicker.  That led to us talking to him, a little in English and a little in German (thank you, Frau Vischer!), and finding out he was also in Bulgaria with a church - the Evangelical Free Church of Germany, and that he was in Sofia specifically to work with disabled kids in orphanages.  Another great connection for our future work!

Then it was upstairs for worship.  I knew it would be a full house, but I was overjoyed to see every seat taken, and people even sitting on the floor.  Every seat but one, that is; my brother Yanko had saved me a seat with the praise team.  I'm starting to get the hang of singing in Bulgarian, though occasionally there are still some oddities - such as singing a hymn to the tune "Auld Lang Syne."  The singing here is robust!  If American churches sang with the same gusto, they'd hear us the next county over.

After church, we headed back to the park.  Borisova Gradina used to be called "Freedom Park" back in communist days, but it really is quite a nice park.  We had several young Bulgarians join us for a rousing game of Killball (patent pending, I'm sure...), and they promised to come back this week.  There was also a 9-year-old boy named Georgi who played some badminton with the kids, and while he was doing that I talked for about 15 minutes with his mother Desislava.  I don't know if they will be back or not, but we plant seeds and see what God will do with them.

Then it was time to catch a bus to Rakovski Stadium, an old communist-era soccer field where we essentially broke in without permission - a pretty bold thing to do in a stadium owned by the police!  Why?  To play Ultimate with the local Ultimate (frisbee) club!  I coached the team at Nashville Christian School for two years, and so I was really excited about this opportunity.  I was also glad to meet an American who has been working with the team named Philip.  He's a little more qualified to give pointers on Ultimate to them than I am, as he played for the University of Wisconsin on their 2003 championship team.  The match was a ton of fun, though our side lost.  We did score 5, which is pretty impressive considering our competition!

It was after 11PM by the time we got dinner and settled back in for the night.  I don't think tonight will be quite as late, but then again the Lord sometimes throws us blessings we can't foresee.  He's doing some exciting things here in Sofia, and across Bulgaria!