March 20, 2010

Our hardest day is now behind us. Yesterday, we finished at the Bulgarian Theological Institute at 5:00 PM and started again at 6:30 PM at Blaga Vast Church. That was a long day!

For three days, we were at the Bulgarian Theological Institute with their extension students. We had a great time with them! They were very engaging and interested in leadership and we had many great discussions and even a few debates! It was a lot of fun for us and they seemed to enjoy it a lot too.

The BTS is an interesting collaboration among a number of different denominations. They are all under one "umbrella" organization for the purposes of administration, government registration and accreditation, but each denomination (or in one case a group of denominations) has a separate faculty. It is common for instructors for one faculty group to teach courses in other faculty groups as well. So, for example, we began teaching in Stara Zagora for one faculty group several years ago. Now we are also teaching for another faculty group on Sofia. Maybe at some time in the future we will teach for another group. We will see.

Now we are back at Blaga Vest Church, this time to teach our basic leadership course for all of their church leaders. We started last night and will continue all day today and finish tomorrow afternoon. This too will be fun for us. We feel so much at home in this church because we have been coming here for about 10 years and we know a lot of the people. Also, it is a bit like deja vu for us; we began doing this work in a big church very much like this one but in Slovakia in 1998! On Monday we go to Plovdiv, which is about 60 miles from here. The adventure continues!!!