Blog I Dare Ya...

In Bulgarian, to say 'Thank You' you say 'Blogadarya'. Now that I am writing this blog, we have adopted the term for when something happens that really must be communicated because of it's humour value, but is also a bit dodgy and needs to be sensitively handled. When this happens, the team look at me and say 'Blog, I dare Ya'. For example at the table tonight, I was trying out my Bulgarian language skills. I told P_ that I have four bikes. That was good and she understood me. I then started to describe why and started with "I have one mountain bike" the Bulgarian for which is "Imam edno planinksi begach". Unfortunatgely I mis-pronounced 'Planinski' and P_ went very red and started to laugh.   A lot.     Apparently, I told her that I hade that part that men have and women don't, on my bike! "Blog I dare ya!"

In other news, we said goodbye to Doug Webber today. He told us we were all awesome (he does that about 5 times a day) and then tried to get us to buy his CD of songs called 'Amen'. He did give Bobby one as a gift so we promised to make copies to give to those people we really, really, don't like like.

We did a lot of trips today and have succeeded in almost clearing the warehouse. We took some stuff to the Romany village for the church there to use in educating and clothing the children. We will visit them again tomorrow afternoon for a church service. Last year we went to curch there and although it is a very small building everybody crams in and the kids play drums of different sorts and sing songs. We found it very moving to see people who have almost nothing praising God regardless. It puts our lives full of stuff into perspective. We saw some of the same kids we made friends with last year and for those of you who saw the pictures last year you will be very suprised to see them this year. For some reason all of the young men have grown mullets!

We also took stuff to a man who has built a church with his own money and is now using it to start a feeding program to feed the poor. So he was especially glad to receive a large oven amongst his gifts.

A lot of items went to a man who travels about the mountains, often where there is no roads (he goes cross country in a four wheel drive vehicle) to talk to villagers about God and also to help them in any way he can. We will meet him tomorrow morning when we go to church here in the town where we are staying.

Lastly, and most touchingly, we visited a lovely little old lady who is 78 years old called Fatima. She invited us into ther home that had no chairs, only beds. We gave her two comfortable chairs for her house and she gave us turkish delight. She really was delightful. Her house was very clean and she was very welcoming yet from the outside you would think her house might fall down in a strong breeze.

As for poor Mark, his (adopted) mother apparently nearly killed him yesterday, as the first rain for three months made the roads slick and she lost control of the car, sending it skidding towards the vertiginous drop on the mountain road. The guys following said they made a miraculous escape what with oncoming traffic and the drop. Thank you God that they were OK. She still refuses to let him go and, tonight when he told her boldly that he would choose his own food from the menu, she went in a strop and then, when he didn't like it, she said  "I told you so, you should always listen to your mama!". When L_ almost ran him over with the four wheel drive this afternoon P_ threatened her and said "Take care for my boy, if you don't I will snore all night!"
(Don't tell her, but while she wasn't here we let him play on the chute on his own, Tee Hee! I'm not sure though, he looked kinda scared what do you think?)