Today’s is an entirely visual blog entry!

Sometimes I get jealous of Aydin colouring-in, so here’s what I came up with. Elly calls it The Game of Life: mission in Bulgaria edition. It’s a decidedly tongue-in-cheek journey through our time in Bulgaria.

(Click to enlarge – I don’t want you all to sue me for damage to your retinas!)

Today (as long as you’re reading this hot-off-the-press on Thursday!) marks 2 months until we leave Bulgaria! So we’re continuing the list of things we’re not so keen to lose:

The following continues on from this post.

5. Not being understood: why is this a good thing? Well, for two reasons, both of which are devious! Firstly, having the ability to conduct private conversations in public can be quite handy! You know, important matters like: “Darling, you have a large piece of spinach stuck between your front teeth”, or “Don’t you think she’s a bit old to dress like her daughter?”, or “I’m a bit tired and bored, how about we make our excuses and leave?”. Secondly, once you’re used to the fact that no one is speaking a language you can understand, you simply tune them out. It’s great! No need to turn around to see why that dude behind you is yelling… he’s almost certainly not yelling in your direction! And when we go out for a coffee, the many murmurs in Bulgarian mingle together into a strange kind of white noise that’s very conducive to the kind of introspective conversations that Elly and I keep finding ourselves having lately!

We’ve been wondering what it’ll be like when we get back to Australia. Will we cope with suddenly not being able to block out all the noise? Or will we accidentally ignore people? Who knows.

6. Non-processed food: actually, Bulgarians LOVE their nasty, stale, preservative-laden processed foods! The supermarkets here are laden with such wonderful goods as: packets of cooked sausages (hellooo killer bacteria!), individually packaged (stale) croissants piped full of sickly strawberry goo, cheap chocolate bars full of cocoa-less ‘chocolate’, dubious flavours of soft drink (pictured above)… the list goes on. However, it’s also quite easy to avoid all that rubbish and we have really been enjoying doing so over here! Fruit and vegetables are cheap, as are dried beans (our new staple!), white cheese, rice and pasta. Eating out is healthier too – ‘fast food’ doesn’t really exist here, so it’s more likely to be traditional Bulgarian fare (stodgy but authentic). I would say “I hope we keep it up when we go back to Australia”, but the above basically describes what we preferred to eat anyway – except that in Australia there’s no financial incentive to buy non-processed food. I think Coles and Woollies have a secret tax on eating healthily!

7. Europeness: I suspect we Australians subconsciously or otherwise consider Europe to be altogether more authentic, or sophisticated, and truly beautiful than Ausland. If someone had told me that a year ago I would have laughed (bitterly!) in their face(s), but having spent our time here I realise that I came to Europe with that very notion tucked away in my head somewhere. The feeling first showed itself when I first entered this shady pine forest underneath Mt. Vitosha – but other might have experienced it as they walk through the doors of Chanel in Paris or Gucci in Florence*. It’s a feeling that leaves you saying “Oh yeah, I’m in Europe, baby!”. I’m afraid to say that it is cool to be in Europe, after all.

[* An additional example might be drinking cappuccinos in Venice... in saying that, I give "told you so" rights to my sister Sal, who I once mocked for her glowing (and allegedly frequent) reports of the quality of coffee in Italy!]

8. A clear and uncomplicated purpose: this one is a bit more philosophical. Around October 2008 when we made the decision to come to Bulgaria we were filled with a near-euphoric sense of purpose. I’m sure others have felt the same thing at various times in their lives – witnessing the birth of their child; accepting an amazing job offer; buying a house; deciding to follow Jesus, etc. I remember feeling lucky that I knew what the next 18 months of my life would look like (it certainly satisfied the control freak in me! For about 5 minutes).

Something of that feeling has stayed with us during our time here. Which is not to say that we haven’t struggled, or found teaching Aydin or learning Turkish difficult – but we retained the luxury of knowing what we’re here for and how long we’re required.

I have two observations about this; forgive me if they contradict each other. On the one hand, if I were asked to narrow down what I’ve learned from our experience to one thing, it would be this: that we’ve been privileged to see through David and Kathryn (and several other missionary families) what a life lived with a singular sense of purpose can achieve! What we hope to bring home is a sense that ‘we’ (meaning, ‘we mere mortals’) can live our lives with some of the same purpose. Not in the sense of striving to be over-achievers, but in the sense of living intentionally. In other words, I’d like to put more thought into how I spend my time – which includes re-evaluating how much of that time I designate “mine”.

On the other hand, sometimes desiring to find a purpose can distract us from simpler things. What I mean is that God moves in mysterious ways and we don’t always see what his purposes are – and so our own sense of purpose often has nothing to do with it! Elly and I think that’s true with our trip to Bulgaria. We certainly felt called to be here, and had that sense of purpose that I described. And we know that God used us to help the Richards’ at the perfect time. But what will we take home from it? Well, we’re not returning to missionary college – though that was a possibility before we left Australia. Neither are we returning to Australia to employ our skills in teaching 6-year-olds, or speaking Turkish. In fact, we can’t really pinpoint what it is that we’ll take from our experience here – personal growth, God’s timing, something we may never know. What we do know is that it’ll be good for us.

Eww. And before I get all mushy, I’m outta here!

Cheers

Stu.

Hi guys!

Greetings from awesome Cappadocia!

After a hectic day in Istanbul culminating in us nearly missing our flights (!), we arrived late on Saturday night to the tiny town of Göreme. Although Göreme has only a few thousand permanent residents, it is the centre of Cappadocian tourism because of its setting amidst some spectacular rock formations referred to as “fairy chimneys”.

These ones are outside the town, but you can see how they’ve carved houses into the rock. In Göreme itself, houses (which are now mostly hotels) have been carved into the rocks throughout the valley.

Bible-reading train-spotters (or history buffs) amongst our readership might know that Cappadocia was an important site for the early Christian church. Many of the sites you can see around Göreme are churches and houses that followers of Jesus carved out (literally) – primarily because Cappadocia was as far from their oppressors as they could get!

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Anyway, enough trivia!

We woke up on Sunday morning and (after oohing and aahing at Göreme which we hadn’t been able to appreciate in the dark of the night before) decided to hire scooters. Awesome idea! We blame Humphrey for suggesting it.

The affable Osman showed an uncharacteristic awareness of the phrase “duty of care” in asking us whether we had any riding experience (Humf: a little; Me: none!), but we both did blockies and apparently proved ourselves! Elly agreed to ride on the back with one or the other of us.

For two scooters for six hours, we paid 85 Turkish Lira (AU$62) including petrol. (Petrol in Turkey is abominably expensive! Like AU$2.48 per litre! Eek.)

We stuck to the roads at first, and found the scooters to provide easy access to some very cool sites, including this 6th Century AD church:

After a while we had a bit more confidence in the scooters and we went “off-road”. Actually, they were still roads, but the kind that only 4WDs would really be able to handle. The scooters performed admirably!

Here’s the mandatory panorama – click on it for a larger version:

So that was our Spectacular Sunday.

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Monday we decided to do much the same thing (that is, travel in a random direction safe in the knowledge that we’d come across something incredible – Cappadocia is like that), except that we did so on foot. Much more tiring and much slower, but still quite rewarding.

As for tomorrow – we’re fairly keen to hire the scooters again! And start earlier in the day this time! We’ll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Stu.