YSA and Youth Conference at the Black Sea

President and Sister Gibbons of the Eastern Europe Area Presidency

Line Dancing with Sister Cox from Star Valley, Wyoming - a local gal.

John and Henry enjoying a reunion at the Restaurant. Henry was our CES Coordinator when we served in Latvia. Now he is Eastern Europe CES Coordinator living in Moscow

Building Bible Sand Castles. Below the kids are enjoying a bit of free time before scripture study and prayer and lights out.

Life has been revolving around the conferences and now we will get back to our regular CES duties. It has been quite a merry-go-round: exhilarating and exhausting.

The Black Sea Conferences

These past 2 or 3 weeks has been very busy putting together the final touches for the youth and young single adult conference held on the Beautiful Black Sea. Iberostar Hotel complex gave us a good deal with all you can eat buffet bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner in a 4 star resort right on the beach. The young people loved it. The pictures only tell a small part of the story. Our good friend who is the CES Coordinator of all of Eastern Europe, Henry Kosak and our immediate supervisor, Igor Poddubny were there to provide learning experiences for each group. Elder and Sister Gibbons of the Eastern Europe Area Presidency attended and gave us all excellent council to make our choice now, so that when tempted we will already have made our decisions. Missions, marriage, temple marriage, etc were part of the goals we should be making.

Building Bible Sandcastles. The youth and YSA were given the challenge to make something that represented stories from the Bible.

Good friends were made. Ayre and Sevda with the Jorgensens, Andersens, and Sis. Mace.

The youth took a Flight 409 Simulated crash that lead them to the 3 degrees of glory, where they were instructed in the entrance exams to each of the kingdoms.

Young Men and Young Women had separate lessons from the Bennetts and Gibbons on proper behavior and etiquette.

Lots of pictures but they still do not tell the whole story. The testimonies of the participants were increased as hearts were touched by the love they felt and the lessons they heard. The food was great; could not have put more into their stomachs as we fed their spirits as well to capacity. What a great opportunity to share our weekend with the wonderful youth and young adults of the Bulgarian Mission.

The Assen Fortress and other thoughts on Bulgaria

For district meeting we travelled 20-30 minutes south of Plovdiv to a Fortress built in the 12Th century a.d. It sits high on a peak overlooking and protecting the valley from all aggression. We climbed all over this fortress, looked at Acenograd far below us, and then found a quiet spot on a hill opposite the fortress for our district meeting. Our lesson was on walls, the types built, why people build walls, and the walls people build around themselves. The point of this was to help us understand how we, as missionaries, can get through their walls to present our message of love, hope, peace, and the gospel, a lesson we will not long forget.

The church in Bulgaria has so few youth and young single adults. We all know that the future of the church lies with the young people. So this week-end there were three 8 year old children who were baptized in 2 different branches. So you can imagine that all of us are thrilled to see the potential this gives to the mission and the church. We attended the baptism of a sweet girl in Sliven. Sorry we didn't get her name, but her mother Daniela used to teach our seminary/institute class, and her grandmother is also active. There is hope. Note the portable baptism font.

It is always exciting to visit a Seminary/Institute class when the teacher is prepared, the students are excited to be there. We were in Sliven on Saturday to visit this class. Miglena Alexieva has been teaching for 4 months and is very enthusiastic about her calling. The class is small but oh so needed. We have about 6 really good teachers who are Bulgarian, and several teachers who are missionaries who are transferred around every 4 months which doesn't allow for consistency. Thank you Miglena.

The Road Back to Yesterday

Yes, that is frost on the ground. There are so many pictures we could use to describe our Sr. Couple Retreat. There are places in Bulgaria that seem to be untouched by time and technology. What was to be a spelunking adventure turned out to be an awesome wandering through the Rhodopi mountains in the southern part of Bulgaria. Winding road filled with potholes up and over a mountain range brought us into spectacular vistas and people who seemed so happy with their agrarian way of life. But first we have to express John's first impression. The pastoral scene of a fisherman brought out something in him that could not be suppressed. Here he is showing us what was really on his mind. The road narrowed through this Trigrad Gorge on our way to the Devil's Throat Cave and the quaint village of Trigrad. The water was crystal clear and with a rocky bottom there just had to be fish.

Farming was done by horse, shovel, and hoe. The men plowed the fields, the women placed the potatoes and covered them up. This is a very large field for the methods being used. The sheep came home following the shepherd just as we were returning from dinner. As some sheep reached their path to home, they took off on the run anxious for the ground meal waiting for them in their pens. Baby lambs also waited for their moms so they could nurse. In the morning we watched one sheep being shorn by hand clippers, leg jerking every time the blades nipped a bit of skin.

We drove through beautiful country sides just 5 kilometers from the Greek border. This nice looking home has no roof; memories of yesteryears among the rock walls.

In the morning we did go through Devil's Throat Cave. It had a 45 meter waterfall we could only get glimpses of. Down we went into this huge cavern and then had 301 steps to climb through the Devil's Throat to the outside. Not a problem because of the handrails that helped us up, but being only a couple of degrees above freezing, our hands got very cold. At the top, we had wonderful views of this spectacular river as it coursed its way down through narrow passage ways.

Taking a different way home we climbed to a ski resort and found this interesting sight. The road was narrow, the houses so close to the road they had to carve out part of the foundations from these 2 houses to allow cars to go through.

Roman History

Seminary and Institute students need to be enrolled within the next 2 months, so we are travelling around the country to present the enrollment packets to the Branch Presidents, 19 in all, and we need to do this within three weeks. In the process we have some extra time to visit some sights. In Ruse, on the 'not' blue Danube River we went to this Roman Castle/fortress built in 69 a.d. The information we read is this fortress was the northern most point of the Roman Empire; it was later, and repeatedly destroyed by the Barbarians, and closed down in 600 a.d. It was built to protect the shipping lanes to the Black Sea. It housed some 600 soldiers. Here is a picture of some of the walls of the fortress.
This is a huge cistern from that time period
The Romans had many gods, but their favorites were Hercules and Diana. All these items were found in the ruins.



The local people worshipped their own Thracian gods. Their favorite was the one on horseback with his dog. All the coins in Bulgaria have a Thracian god on horseback with a dog similar to this one.The Romans ate by reclining and this slab of rock (as I call it) is one of those lounging beds. Not too comfortable unless they covered them. The Stella that was next to this did not show any bedding.

At the fortress sight was a German WWII bunker which the caretaker took us through. He was quite colorful in his own right. The Bulgarians were allies with the Nazi's even though they did not allow any of their Jews to be taken to concentration camps.
The Danube is a major waterway for shipping. It looks like it is still polluted. A Romanian industry was sited for causing deformities in babies in Bulgaria and was shut down about 10 years ago.

We were driving home from Pleven on the 15th of March taking a scenic route through a small village named Troyan and came up to this Gypsie cart. A picture is worth a thousand words.

March is the month of the return of the storks. We saw 6 of them just outside of Pleven. This is important because the Bulgarians have a tradition of wearing red and white decorated yarn called Martinitzas from March 1 until the day you see a stork. Then you are supposed to tie the martinitza to a budding fruit tree. The stork is a symbol of prosperity and good fortune. Doing this is to help those who participate in the tradition to have a successful year.

We hope each of you have a prosperous year even if you don't see a stork.

A Little Bulgarian History

To begin this blog, we proudly introduce Easton Kelly Edwards, our latest born grandson. 7 lbs., 7 oz., 19 1/2 inches long. Born February 27, 2009. Proud parents are Tessa and Kurt Edwards, Provo UT.

A little Bulgarian History lesson now: Thracians lived here at least from 1000 to 200 years b.c. Throughout all of Bulgaria can be seen mounds of various sizes. These are the burial places of important Thracians who lived during these times. This is one of them near a village called Starasel. We went there yesterday for a P-Day activity with a couple of Elders, Elders Hope and Hammond who are serving in Pazardjik, a small town near Plovdiv.

This mound, as a Thracian tomb/temple, was discovered only 9 years ago. Better built and more elaborate than others we have seen, this tomb is dated from around 400 to 500 b.c.
Inside they found all kinds of pottery, horse trappings, weapons, etc. now located in museums across Bulgaria.

Uncovering the tomb entrance, they had to shore up the structure to keep it from collapsing.
This is the only tomb so far discovered in Bulgaria with colonnades. In every crack, crevice and surface, people today have stuffed or scattered coins for whatever reason, good luck or donation to the excavation.

Elder Hope is standing in the entrance to the inner room where a king was buried. The outer chamber was for some kind of worship or even a burial ground for his favorite horse (a common practice in most Thracian tombs.) When they unearthed the tomb they cleared out all of the burial items and left the rooms empty to prevent people from walking off with the artifacts. There are lots of pictures showing the artifacts placed around the grounds for visitors to appreciate.
From inside the tomb we looked out over the whole valley, the village of Starasel in the center. In the haze in the horizon is Plovdiv.

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW

The winds were howling and the snow coming down horizontally. It had been snowing almost 24 hours. A foot of snow already lay on the ground with no signs of letting up. A trip to Varna was in the plans with us leaving in 4 hours by the time we got out of bed. This involved a 5 hour road trip through Burgas and the mountains between Burgas and Varna. What was the weather like between Plovdiv and Varna? A call to Elder Mace in Sliven was not encouraging. This would be the half-way point. He had cancelled his trip as well because of similar conditions. Cancel Super Saturday? Done! Stay home! So we built a snowman on our deck. Sounds like fun. What else to do on a snow day. Check out the snowman, it was so cold that he even had blue lips.

We called up the Elders and Sisters and invited them over for a hot meal at the end of their day. They were mobile; it is a lot easier to get around walking then driving on the narrow roads we have to drive on.

We woke up this morning to an email from our real estate broker announcing an offer on our house. This needed our approval and Spencer’s signature by the end of the week-end, as time was of the essence. This is an email we would not have received until Sunday night, possibly too late to act on. There are indeed “tender mercies” being given and we appreciate this blessing. Sorry to postpone Super Saturday, but thankful for the offer on our home.