In 2001, I felt led to join a mission group and after raising funds, I was on my way to Bulgaria. After joining New Mission Systems International, I was looking forward to teaching English to the community. We hoped it would be a good way to support the local churches and to evangelize. In the town of Botevgrad, we held English classes in The United Churches of God. We started with just four adults because it was the first thing to have been opened to the public there. I was the second person to come in, after our team member, Sandra, had paved the way. At first, the locals were hesitant to join because they were cautious of strangers or new visitors. Having public events seemed odd to them. Since I was still learning the language myself, I relied on my translator, Valeriya, to help smooth the way. She and I began to incorporate American culture into some of the lessons to gain more interest. We also added Bible lessons as a way to bring the community together. It really does take a village, so we had several other young people help us translate everything until we got better at speaking it ourselves. It was a great help and without it, we would not have been able to answer their questions as efficiently. One lesson we held was about the American tradition of Thanksgiving. They wanted to learn about that holiday. It was such fun dressing up and having a Thanksgiving meal with them. As Christmas approached, we decided it might be a… Read More
