ITALY & BULGARIA- 24 HOURS EACH

On Monday evening we flew to Milano, Italy. Our manager Davide picked us up Tuesday morning and we spent the day with employes from the municipality of Milano. We visited a home for unaccompanied minor refugees with needs of furniture, kitchen appliances, computers and a vegetable garden space.

Then we visited the Refugee Welcome Center. This new model is a one-stop shop to help new arrivals navigate the social services available to them. They too would like a vegetable garden space to bring the community together.

On Wednesday we spent time with Elder and Sister Easter, our infield couple serving in Cyprus, who were in the area office in Frankfurt for training.

On Thursday we had dinner with our Turkish translator and friend, Meric, who was also in Frankfurt for training.

On Friday morning we flew to Bulgaria with Coraline and Elder and Sister Kershisnik. They are an Area Humanitarian couple who live in Paris and are construction specialists. They came with us to help sort out the school building project we have in Rusalya, Bulgaria. We met with the structural engineer and visited the school site. This is a boarding school where 40 children live. These children’s backgrounds range from being orphans, being removed from abusive homes and living in poverty whose parents wanted a better life for them. The new dormitory addition will double their capacity. We were also there to check on the completion of the landscaping service project that 50 of the youth from our church participated in last summer.

Our new in-field couple, Elder and Sister Anderson, arrived from the US just the day before we flew into Bulgaria. They made the visits with us. The school is located three hours outside of Sofia, so we had plenty of time on the road to get to know each other. We were overwhelmed on this trip with the good people we met. The structural engineer and architect have shared their expertise pro bono. The directors of the school are famous Bulgarian stage and film actors who have now devoted their lives to caring for these children. In this sometimes-troubling world, be assured there are many, many people with good hearts serving the people in their communities.

Cold yogurt/cucumber soup, banista (cheese filled pastry), and fablous Bulgarian yogurt.

We returned to Frankfurt in time to visit the annual International Book Fair. The roots of the world’s largest book fair, which once played a key role in distributing Luther’s writings near and far, including his translation of the Bible into German, began in Frankfurt. Following the invention of the printing press with movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450, Frankfurt became an important market for printing and selling books. During the trade fair in 1520 an individual book dealer sold over 1,400 copies of Luther’s writings. Frankfurt is the birthplace of the Book Fair. Our church had a Family Search booth where people could search for their ancestors.