Today started out with a lovely breakfast at the hotel. They have a wonderful continental breakfast bar. The restaurant is one floor up from the street level and has an outdoor deck area surrounded with lush greenery. Add the birds singing in the background and it was a very luxurious and peaceful time. It will probably be our first, last, and only such peaceful breakfast. We leave for Lom tomorrow before breakfast is served, and we will have the girls with us when we get back. It will still be very lovely, but likely somewhat less peaceful.
After breakfast, we drove out to the airport to meet the Lom orphanage mission team. Beth and the group from England arrived at Terminal 1, the older terminal, and we went over there to find them, but we arrived after they had already gone to Terminal 2 to meet the rest of the group coming in from Georgia. We caught up with them there and had a wonderful time getting to know their group. We got to meet Kris and Tedi Angelov, the couple who run the Alongside Bulgaria mission organization that arranges the Lom trip every year. In another interesting "small world" turn of events, Kris actually got his divinity degree from the McAfee Divinity School at Mercer University (Atlanta Campus). For those of you reading this blog that don't already know this, I grew up 5 minutes from the Mercer Atlanta campus and took a couple of continuing education classes there, Carolyn had a couple of classes there in her attempt to attend as many colleges as possible and still get a degree in less than 4 years, and I currently work for the Mercer Engineering Research Center in Warner Robins, GA and have some close contacts with the faculty and staff at the Macon campus.
We spent some time talking to Beth about the conditions at the orphanage (a hectic but principally positive environment) and about her time spent with Emily Cate over the past several years. One thing that nearly everybody in the group emphasized was their approach to working with the children at the orphanage. This group doesn't come in like Santa Claus with a huge bag of toys, drop them off in the middle off the night, and then vanish forever and move on to another orphanage. They have returned repeatedly to the same orphanage for the last 7 or 8 years and have focused on building relationships with the children. By returning every year, the kids have realized that this group really cares about them personally, rather than a group who just brings them "stuff" then disappears forever, and it has allowed them to build very close relationships with the kids over the years. I think it is a wonderful way to approach their service.
About half an hour after we met Beth and the English part of the team, the group from Commerce, GA showed up, and we had a wonderful time talking with them as well. Beth gave us a great treasure of digital photos of Emily Cate, and Jennifer Sanders was so thoughtful as to get prints made of some photos she had and she brought them to us at the airport. It was great to get to spend a little time with the group, and we look forward to maintaining a relationship with them as Emily Cate grows up.
After we left the airport, we ventured downtown to do some shopping. The folks at Family National Association, the Bulgarian agency that partners with our agency in the States, had told us of a couple of souvenir markets in the city center, and we set out to find them. I think we were successful in finding what they were talking about. We spent several hours downtown getting lunch and walking around looking at some of the shops in the central district. When we were good and worn out, we came back to the hotel, collapsed for an hour or so, then walked up the street for dinner and to pick up some water at the grocery store. We are off to Lom in the morning to pick up Emily Cate, then to Shumen for dinner with Darin and Yordanka (Madelyn's foster parents). It's going to be a long day of driving, but should be a very rewarding one as well. Hopefully more about that tomorrow night.
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