Bulgaria | Missions Blog
Bulgaria
We have served on the foreign mission field for more than 20 years. Following twelve years in Romania, we moved our family to neighboring Bulgaria, where we have worked for the past nine years. You may have a map in the back of your Bible that shows the region of Bulgaria. The area was known as Thrace. In New Testament times, the region we now know as Bulgaria was part of the Roman Empire.
Bulgaria is located on the Balkan Peninsula and forms the most Easterly border of Europe and shares a border with Romania, the Black Sea, Turkey, Greece, Serbia, and Macedonia. We passed through Bulgaria many times when we were still living in Romania, while traveling to the annual missionary retreat, often held in Greece. In the early days, the border crossing could take two to three hours or more. We had to change money, obtained a transit visa, purchased road tax, and pay a tax that the missionaries sometimes referred to as “the mud puddle tax.” We were always required to drive our car through a puddle of water that was intended to sanitize our car.
In 2011 we saw ourselves in transition as the Romanians were taking on more and more of the ministry. After much prayer, we took a survey trip to Bulgaria with our pastor. We stayed in the home of a missionary and his wife who were working in Macedonia. They rented an apartment in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, and commuted to Macedonia because they were not able to obtain a visa to live in Macedonia.
We were back in Bulgaria less than two weeks when we were notified about some families who were meeting in homes in Sandanski, Bulgaria, and desired a missionary. Not long thereafter, we began traveling one weekend each month from Brasov, Romania, to Sandanski, Bulgaria, where we held a Sunday service. We drove the ten-hour one-way trip by car every month for nearly a year before packing up our family and making the move. I remember driving down a dark and desolate highway late one night and commenting to Sherry that it was not that many years ago that Bulgaria was closed to missionaries.
Bulgaria was under the control of the Ottomans for nearly 500 years, ending in the late 1800’s. There remains a rather large segment of the population, about ten percent, that identify with Islam. Many towns and villages still have an active mosque. In the years following WW2, Bulgaria was taken over by communists. Industry and agriculture were nationalized, Bibles were considered contraband, and church attendance came with a price. When socialism was finally scrapped in 1991, missionaries made their way to Bulgaria, but very few stayed.
Upon leaving Romania, crossing the Danube River, and entering Bulgaria, the first thing that one notices is that all the signs are in Cyrillic. Bulgarian is a Slavic language similar to Russian and utilizes a Cyrillic alphabet. The nod of the head from side to side indicates “yes” and an up and down movement of the head signifies “no”. This was difficult to get used to and created some difficult situations, particularly when or- dering at a restaurant. Waiter, “do you have chicken and rice?” He nods his head up and down, to which I then respond, “I would like some.” The waiter then says “nu, niama” (no, we don’t have any).
The Bulgarian language is phonetic, and we quickly learned to read from a Cyrillic script, even though we didn’t understand most of what we were reading. For the first two years, we met with our Bulgarian teacher two to three days each week in the cafeteria of an IKEA furniture store. There was always a place to park, ample seating, good lighting, and cheap coffee.
The Bulgarian Bible took some getting used to. In the Old Testament, 1st and 2nd Chronicles are named 3rd and 4th Kings, which is no big change, but in the New Testament the books are arranged much differently. Coming after the four Gospels and the book of Acts, is the book of James, the books of Peter and John, Jude, the Pauline Epistles and lastly the book of Reve- lation. Because nearly everyone attending services has the same Bulgarian Bible, I can point them not only to the book, chapter, and verse, but get them there quickly by calling out the page number. This worked great until we began having Arabic speakers in the services who came with their Arabic
Bibles. Since I had no idea how to pronounce the Books of the Bible in Arabic, I often chose a text from either Genesis or Revelation, making it easy for them to turn to either the first book or the last book of their Bible for the Scripture text.
When war broke out in Syria, many people passed through Bulgaria. Most of them were trying to get to Germany. As well as the Syrians, there were people coming from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and from parts of West Africa. Most of them were housed in the refugee centers in Sofia. Seeing this as an opportunity to share the gospel with people we would not normally have contact with, we gained access by teaching English, math, and music in all three refugee centers in Sofia. We hosted several families in our home and handed out many Bibles in Arabic, Kurdish, Urdu, Farsi, and French.
Almost four years ago we rented a storefront in Sofia and began hold- ing weekly services. Prior to Covid, we spent time every week passing out gospel tracts and invitations at places with heavy foot traffic, typi- cally bus stops and subway station entrances/exits. Following Covid, our main outreach became literature distribution in the apartment blocks. It is not unusual to distribute 1000 or more gospel tracts and invitations in just a few hours. We have several
people attending service because of the literature dis- tribution. Stoian, a middle-aged man entered services on a Sunday morning and said, “my church only lights candles, I need answers.” He rarely misses a service. Ivan is another man that regularly attends. During the 70’s, Ivan spent seven years in a Bulgaria prison. His crime, professing Jesus Christ.
Most Bulgarians consider themselves to be Christian, which mostly means that they are not Muslim. Their “Christianity” is steeped in ritual, tradition, and nationalistic pride, and has little to do with spiritual conviction and relationship with Jesus Christ. Please pray for the people of Bulgaria.
Jim Black
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