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Bulgaria
I went to Bulgaria this summer for a month. I've been on six
mission trips before, but I've never had any trip that could even
compare to this one. I went with a missions team from ORU,
and we didn't do anything that I expected to do. I expected to go
on a mission trip, do some dramas or something evangelistic, and
get people saved. However, in their culture, anything strongly
evangelistic is seen as part of the Occult. Instead, we served
our contacts and the church in Bulgaria.
My team consisted of eight people. We went to different
churches and preached. We probably did five services a week. When
we weren't preaching, we were serving our contacts in any way
possible. The American mindset is that if you're not busy doing
something, then you're not being productive and you're not doing
any good. Our contacts told us that we were more of a blessing
just by being there than by anything we actually did. It
was difficult to understand at first, but I now realize the truth
of what they were saying.
It was amazing to see our family in Christ that lives in very
different conditions from those to which we are accustomed. They
were grateful for everything they had and they wanted to share
everything and serve us with everything they had. This made a
slight dilemma because we came there to serve them. We found that
we could serve them by bringing God's Word to them in obedience
to the commands of God. When we preached, it was by the grace of
God. Every time that any of us tried to preach from our own
words, it would flop. But every time we gave it to God, His power
and His anointing would be on our words and people would get
touched by what we were saying. It was hard for me to comprehend
that God could use me to preach. I'm only 20 years old and I hate
to speak in front of people. But God could use me to preach. The
times when God used me the most were the “surprise”
opportunities when I was the least prepared and I had to rely
completely on Him. One time I went up to speak and didn't have a
clue what I was going to say - not even a Scripture to encourage
the people. But God moved. His words came out and I didn't even
stumble over them. God's grace is sufficient. His strength is
made perfect in our weakness. God wants us to give everything we
have, and then when we finally run out of our own resources, all
of His resources kick in and there is more than enough. God truly
does more than we can even think or imagine.
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