Arriving in Bulgaria

We left at 4:40 a.m. to go to the train station in Sighisoara. The first thing we saw was an entire family of Gypsies sleeping in the waiting room. Little children were curled up both on the benches and underneath on the hard floor -- no blankets or pillows -- sound asleep.





Of course, the train was late by about 25 minutes. We arrived in Bucharest at 11:30 and then switched to a much older train bound for Sofia. Murphy's law -- the morning train (when the weather was cool) was air conditioned. The afternoon train wasn't, and it was HOT. We were pretty wilted when we arrived in Gorna Oryahovitsa at about 5:30 p.m., 13 hours after we set out.





We were met by David Leistrum who works for international teams, and Dimitur "Jimmy" Luchev who is the lead pastor at the Church of God in Stara Zagora. We had about a two hour drive to Stara Zagora through some magnificent mountain scenery. Both Romania and Bulgaria are very beautiful countries.

This is a fortress that was built in the middle ages to defend against Turkish invaders. Jimmy gave us a great running commentary on this country whose recorded history goes back 6000 years.

Stara Zagora is a very pleasant city of 170,000 people situated in the middle of the country. We are staying in the apartment that is normally occupied by another missionary couple who are back in the U. S. on leave.