It's the end of a long, tiring day of ministry and guess what our team is doing? We're all gathered round a laptop watching Napoleon Dynamite. I have to say that I think Napoleon is among the stupidest movies ever, but Darin and Bruce think it is so wonderful and profound. Paul's never seen it so we're initiating him, and Bruce and Darin are convinced that a second watch will convert me. I'm not so sure.
Actually, watching a movie together is a good wind-down after the last couple of days. It's 11:00pm on Sunday, and we still don't have our luggage. According to the baggage service at the airport, our bags are expected in on the 11:00pm flight from Frankfurt (right now, in other words) and will be delivered to us at our rooms around 1:00am. We'll see!
Speaking of our rooms, they're really simple but very nice. We're staying a guesthouse in downtown Sofia. The owner and his wife are Christians and attend the church of Victor Virchev, our host here in Sofia. We have two double rooms with two bathrooms off of a little private common area. Breakfast was served in our common area this morning and was quite the spread. We had various sausages, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheeses, breads, jellies, nutella spread (yum!), peanut butter, meuslix, milk, juices, tea, and coffee. Wow! The rooms are remarkably cheap, only $38 per night.
Now, on the real stuff of today. We attended two different Pentecostal churches, one in the morning and one in the evening. These were the two largest Pentecostal churches in Sofia and quite influential. Victor Virchev is the pastor of the largest (the morning church) and the head of about 500 Pentecostal churches in the country. Bruce preached his Watchmen on the Walls sermon (Isaiah 62:6-7) in both. The message is far-reaching and so new to many of the congregants, but there were many specifically positive responses and the pastor of the evening service, Rumen, was very positive. He had some tremendous remarks as a follow-up to Bruce that showed that he was really listening and took to heart the message.
Rumen, Pastor Virchev, and several other business, political, and church leaders will be with us tomorrow night at another meeting. The meeting is rather informal but will allow us to really expand on the message Bruce brought today and see where the leaders feel the nation is and what we might be able to help them with. It will be really helpful.
Another answer to prayer today was on the Romania side of the trip. We were able to finalize some plans that have been hanging out there for a while. As it turns out, we will not be heading to the central city of Deva and Hunedoara County after all. The planned seminar with political leaders just wasn't coming together. This time of year is hard to plan around in Europe because so many people go on holiday. As a result, Dani Raducanu wasn't able to pull together an effective teaching opportunity for us. Instead, however, we will be going to a couple of cities in the eastern part of the country near the Black Sea. Last year we met with a representative of BIG Impact, a cross-denominational organization that is developing a teaching and retreat center. We had been hoping to converse with them some more, and now we have a chance. I'm disappointed that we'll miss seeing Dani, but it seems that God has other doors for us to walk through this time. It will be good to see another part of Romania and connect further with influential organization that can give us a real sense of ministry opportunities in Romania.
That's all for now. I think I'll have to relent and watch Napoleon Dynamite for a while. Yuck. More to come...
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