What is the best thing you know?

What is the best thing you know? Icecream, relaxing, sleeping maybe it is watching tv?
For us I can say it's none of these things. We have something bigger than watching tv or eating ice cream, something bigger than both sleeping and relaxing. When we do this thing we get more energy and don't need that much sleep. We become so happy after this thing that in a miraculous way we are able to do more and don't need to relax that much.
"So what is this best thing you are talking about?" You can think.
I will tell you in a minute.
Friday we were in a gipsyvillage called Asfaltova Basa. this village is quite poor, but still the people that live there are very nice. We were inviting people to the prayermeeting that we were going to have that evening. We started talking to some women sitting outside enjoying the sun and they asked if we wanted some coffee. So we sat there, drank coffee and talked with them.
They had a lot of questions about different things, like are you alowd to dance when you are christian, can you drink coffee when you are christian and why does my pastor say that I can't be baptized?

(Asfaltova Basa)


After a while we continued to invite people and at 6:00 pm we had our prayermeeting. Helena was preaching, but sadly there was a lot of noise, people going outside, people coming in. Helena was kind of sad, but after the meeting we talked with a lady that had pain in her arm and because of that she couldn't work (women that are woking in Bulgaria are not like most of the women working in our countries. They need to be strong to do the work they do).
So we prayed for her, and Helena was thinking, please God, let her be healed. Show them what I was preaching about is true. And truly, she was healed. You can say, God is good ;)
Now the best part comes, this is the best thing we know.
We had heard about a woman that wanted to be baptized, she had believed in God for a quite a while and she had been praying both morning and evenings for a long time, but she had never made a choice to really follow Jesus.
So we went to her house, talked about baptism and Jesus. Told her that baptism is a sign, a sign that you are leaving your old life and starting your new life. Talked about that following Jesus isn't about being religious, but that it is about having a relationship with Jesus.
After that we went to the hotwatersprings here in Velingrad and Helena and I baptized her.
The best things we know is when a person gets healed of some kind of sickness, when a person decides to follow Jesus and this day, it was baptizing this woman.

Some pictures

A village called Grasjavo. It's beautiful over there.


This picture I saw at a restaurantdoor..
Hmm, interesting..

2 weeks have gone by..

After we have been here for 2 weeks now, you might wonder how we have been ☺
I am sorry, you can say we are kind of slow with updating our blog. Well well, we’ll do better the following weeks ☺

So what can we say that could ever express what we are feeling and experiensing here? WOW!! We feel ever so blessed to be a part of this team, together we are loving people into heaven. We meet them in their villages and just talk with them. We befriend them and tell them about Jesus.

Three times a week we have sermons for the local people and three times a week we have housegatherings in the different villages. When we preach and talk about Jesus we have to do it in a simple way, since most of the people never have heard about either Jesus or the Bible. This is quite a challenge for us western reasoners and Bibleschool students. One day we were preaching about healing and we asked the people listening, ”how can you be healed?” One woman responded, ”all you have to do is believe”. This answer seemed right at first. ”Believe in what?” we asked. ”It doesn’t matter, as long as you believe” she replied. ”So it doesn’t matter if you belive in a tree, a wich or God?” ”No” the woman concluded. This is just an example of why it is important to preach as simple and clear as possible.

It’s really amazing how kind and loving people are. Just this day we started to talk with a lady whom we just met while we were walking, and after we had talked with her a little, she invited us to come in and have some cofee or tea. When people invite us in, they don’t just talk about the weather, they can tell you about their entire life, both ups and downs. This is a good oppurtunity for us to preach into their lives and show them God’s love for them. People are very open and they are really listening to what we are saying. When we ask if we can pray for them, we are almost always allowed to do so, even though they are not always christians. We can really see that they are being touched by God.
It so great to see how people are not afraid to open both their homes and themselves for complete strangers.
Maybe we too can learn something of the Bulgarian people?

Traveling to Bulgaria

Wel, there's actually not that much to say. But it was really long and loong and tyering!! The plane took us first to Prague and we decided to go to the city of Prague. So we thought we'd be smart and ask for a locker so we wouldn't have to bring our little suitcase with us. So we asked ceveral people at the airport for lockers but we couldn't find any. We decided to ask again, and the lady said "yes lost luggage is over there" and she pointed to the left. "Lost luggage?!" we asked, "no, lockers!!" But it apeared to be that they didn't have any lockers at the airport.. Strange..? Stranger that everybody pointed us towards the same direction..
Any ways, we decided to take or little suitcase with us into town.

I must say that we were struggeling with our suitcase on the bricks but we managed. We ate dinner at a nice restaurant, we ate "goulash with two cats". Hehe ;)
Back at the airport we got really really tired, considering we still had 5 more hours before our plane left for Sofia, we made our own bed at the airort.
And then.. Finally we arived in Sofia!!! Two nice missionaries met us at the airport. On the way to our new 7-weeks home we only had a small cofrontation with the Bulgarian police. After being presented with a sweedish registered car, a driver without any identification, a sweedish driverslicense (though not the drivers), one norwegian passport and one dutch passport, the police desided to let us go;). We arived at our new home about 01:00 in the night. Charlotta, one of our beautiful missionaries had decorated our beds with a rose, som candy and a card wishing us heartly welcome. And this is where our adventure started.

Tomorrow..

Tomorrow we will start our "journey" to Bulgaria. We will leave with the train to Oslo at 23:05 :( and our flight to Prague leaves at 07:35. We have 9 hours before our flight leaves to Sofia so we will spend the day in Prague! :D:D I've heard Prague is a great city so I am kind of looking forward to spending the day there, even though this means that it will take about 25 hours before we finally reach velingrad.
You would think that we would be ready to leave now. But I am sorry to say, this is not true.. I suppose we will start packing tomorrow morning.. It is going to be a loooong day. But it will be worth it!!
Hope we'll be hearing from you all sometimes and we will miss you even though we will have a great time there.
God bless!

Bulgaria here we come:)!!!

Yes yes!!! Bulgaria, HERE WE COME!!!
Less then two weeks from now will we be going to Bulgaria :)
We have been looking forward to this God given adventure for quite some time now!!
We don't really know what to expect yet, so we'll expect more than we can imagine!! (We think this is a good attitude..)
We'll be gone for 7 weeks and two days to be exact. MAN how we are looking forward to it. Poor boyfriend that has to stay behind.. :(
We are going to write more, update this blog just to let you know what is happening and how we are. Hoping for your prayers!
Lots of hugs, Deborah and Helena!