| This is a quick update about a recent mission team from Cabot,
Arkansas. More info and pictures in our upcoming newsletter!
The team went to the northwestern Bulgarian city of
Berkovitsa, where they worked in three different orphanages and in
the nearby gypsy village of Rakovitsa. There were a total of
twenty-three people along: five Ridgways, six Bulgarians, and twelve
Americans.
The team was a real multi-purpose, multi-project endeavor. Every
day, they split into multiple groups that traveled to the various
locations to conduct seminars and classes, play with children, and
work.
Every morning, two groups went to the gypsy village. One divided its
members between teaching a seminar on parenting—things like, proper
diet, the importance of sending children to school and teaching them
Bulgarian (school attendance is low in the gypsy village, and most
young children only speak the gypsy language rather than Bulgarian),
and educational activities which could be done with children—and
taking care of the children whose parents attended the seminar. The
other group taught a sewing class, which was a sort of follow-up to
the class they taught last year on several machines that they had
then donated.
Another morning group headed off to an orphanage that we have just
recently made contact with, that we refer to as Berkovitsa 4. (The
real name means roughly, “school for children with mental and
physical retardation”.) Our first visit to that home had
come just a couple of months before, when one of our April sole
teams distributed new shoes—we saw a lot of the kids there wearing
shoes that we had given! At this home there are many older boys with
only slight mental or physical handicaps, but who are otherwise
quite bright and very willing to work. The home already possessed
facilities for woodworking and candle-making, and several of the
team members worked with the kids to show them how to build a new
set of playground equipment for their home. The kids took to the
work with great enthusiasm and skill, and the team members remarked
that, after the first day, they just watched the kids work as they
insisted upon doing everything themselves. The playground was
finished in good time and is quite well-made and very sturdy. This
is most encouraging, as Bulgarian Child has plans to hire the young
men at this home to build playgrounds at other homes in the region,
and possibly beds as well.

The team also had two groups that were intended to teach computer
and ESL classes. In the mornings, they were assigned to the hospital
at Berkovitsa (where Ridgway Ministries has donated, among other
things, new anesthesiology equipment) to teach there, but due to
unforeseen difficulties they were unable to do so. Accordingly,
after the second morning where we helped in the mattress deliveries,
the teams split up, some joining other groups at other homes, some
working to set up computers donated to the Health School by another
donor, and one member conferencing with the director at Berkovitsa 4
about a shared hobby, beekeeping, which eventually resulted in the
purchase of two hives for the home.
In the early afternoons, the entire team gathered together for about
an hour and a half of playing and working with the kids at
Berkovitsa
4, doing things from simple games and toys to painting, following
which they split up into afternoon assignments. Sewing classes were
again conducted, this time in Berkovitsa 3. The ESL and computer
teams went to Berkovitsa 2 (the Health School) and conducted their
respective seminars, and therapy groups and the construction team
continued their work in Berkovitsa 4. Then, in the evenings,
everyone got back together to do VBS-style
lessons/singing/eating/crafts at Berkovitsa III.

Thursday and Friday were somewhat different, as on Thursday the team
went North to Lom to visit another home there and do some
sightseeing, and on Friday they headed back to Sofia to fly out on
Saturday. The group also delivered mattresses that they had
early shipped as part of a container of humanitarian aid (that
arrived less than a week before they did).
This trip will be the subject of our next BCI newsletter, so MORE
INFO COMING SOON!
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