Marie and Alex from Bulgaria
Twenty seven years ago, as a brave and naïve second year nursing student, I took my first flight on my first missions trip. At the age of four I declared that I wanted to be a missionary when I grew up – this was my chance to taste the missionary life.
My destination – Sofia, Bulgaria.
The country recently opened up to the gospel after the fall of communism and we were ready to tell students the Good news of Jesus. There I learnt many things about God, myself and the sinfulness of people. I also learnt that I wanted to be a missionary the rest of my life!
Fast forward 27 years and I just returned from Sofia. This time, I trained 42 of our missionaries from Central and Eastern Europe how to use digital tools to spread the gospel. We met in our beautiful national office, run by our Bulgarian missionaries.
My highlight – Alex.
Alex, a Bulgarian student who was wondering about the purpose of life and the existence of God. While searching the internet he found our evangelistic website everystudent.com. After reading many of the articles, Alex became convinced that God was real and Jesus offered a way for him to connect with God. He accepted Jesus in his life, and through resources on the site and an email follow-up series he grew in his relationship with the Lord.
Alex became convinced that the site needed to be translated into Bulgarian for his countrymen to also discover the Good news about Jesus. He contacted our ministry, and with their help, he translated the site. He advertised on FaceBook to make the site known.
It was my privilege to help Alex develop his strategy to reach Bulgarians. The past three months he had 40 000 site visitors and 400 people invited Jesus into their lives. We planned together what next steps he could take with these new believers and how he could see more people visit the site.
I was thrilled to see how the Lord has been working in Bulgaria. From the humble efforts of a few South African and American students who went to share the gospel there in the early ‘90’s to a fully-fledged Bulgarian ministry.
Thank the Lord for what He is doing in Bulgaria and pray for Alex and our missionaries from the other Eastern European countries to serve the Lord with all their hearts and skills.
See photo from Marie’s trip here.
Also thank the Lord for Stefan’s healing – he was given the green light last week to start walking again. Pray for him as he will be meeting with our church planters in India from 19 February -2 March.
Oh happy day! Returning the wheelchair.