Mission Bulgaria Week 17

NEWS – Week 17 – December 8-16, 2001 – Sofia, BULGARIA

Greeting from Bulgaria:

This is Kathryn Barton reporting on behalf of my fiancée, Dony K. Donev and Cup and Cross Ministries International.

I left on the 15th of December for Bulgaria to be with Dony and his family for the holidays. I had a very pleasant flight and made it through custom without any problems. For Americans, Bulgarian borders are open and no visas are required for a stay under 30 days. When arriving at the Sofia airport, snow covered the ground. The temperature at my arrival was –16 C. The Black Sea is frozen and this is a record temperature since 1929. Today we even made snow ice cream. Though I have only been here for a day, I have adjusted quite well to the 7-hour time change and am having a wonderful time in the country of Bulgaria.

This past week Dony traveled to the town of Samokov to organize a special Christmas program. The Bulgarian Church of God there has a local congregation of more than 1,500 members. This is the largest Gipsy Church on the Balkan Peninsula. Sunday night they had a Christmas service for homeless Gipsy children and orphans where more than 200 Christmas shoebox gifts where given to the children present. Two hundred more gifts where given to children in the capital Sofia under the ministry of the Central Church of God, which is also organizing a Christmas lunch for elderly people who do not have families. This lunch will be held on Tuesday.

The Bulgarian Church of God is organizing other similar Christmas social programs in each region of the country. Their effect is very prominent especially in the Northwest part of the country, where 47 new congregations have been established in the past 3½ years under the leadership of the regional supervisor, pastor Emil Petrov from the town of Lom.