Light in the darkness

Dear friends,

a newsletter with the latest news from Varna/ Bulgaria is now available via the following link:

Newsletter November 2011

Thank you very much for your interest and support.

Dear friends,

In September Bulgarian media reported about our work in Vladislavovo. These reports are avaliable for download via the following link:

Reports

Your are also invited to visit our new blog

Dear Friends of Light in the Darkness/ Hilendarski,

a newsletter about our work is now available for download via the following link:

Newsletter July/ August 2011

Dear Friends of Light in the Darkness

Two months ago Frank travelled to England and visited Helen Turner and her friends from the Methodist Church of Haterleigh. His report about his jouney is now availabe for download via the following link

Journey to England

For Light in the Darkness

Brigitte Buhr

Dear Friends of Light in the Darkness,

a newsletter about our work is now available for download via the following link:

Newsletter May 2011

Thank you very much for your interest in our work.

For Light in the Darkness

Brigitte Buhr

Dear Friends of Light in the Darkness,

Annemarie Dick from Germany visited the ghetto in Varna in November 2010. Her report about this visit is available for download via the following link:

Report Annemarie Dick

We thank you very much for your interest in our work and wish you a blessed Easter.

For Light in the Darkness

Brigitte Buhr

Dear Friends of Light in the Darkness

A newsletter informing you about our work in Varna/ Bulgaria is now avaliable for download via the following link:

Newsletter October 2010

GOD counts differently as mankind does which becomes more and more estranged from GOD and  feathers its nest at the expense on him. Profit and growth are no standard for GOD.
Yes, I do believe, that GOD likes to choose the despised to get them out of their misery and desperation. This is what we can experience here in the ghetto every day and is especially true for the youngest children. It’s a daily struggle and  hard work for Light in the Darkness just to let this light shine into the ghetto. Sometimes I feel as if this misery eats me up and above  all the amount
of work makes me soak with sweat and sometimes dark hours come over me. However when I see  the children who GOD has awakened  and hear their lively laughing and look into their wonderful open faces then I can see  the light in the darkness, which does not only shine in the ghetto but also gives me a I firm orientation. I would now like to invite you to take part in our work by reading this report.

Building site of our homepage

Because of an error some time ago we sent out  wrong information, in which was pointed out, that I had changed my way of informing you. So that there aren’t any kind of misunderstanding any more here are some short hints concerning my information. Instead of more or less sending regular e-mails in future I will send out one e-mail once a month with the latest information from the ghetto. The reason is  the number of e-mails has increased enormously nowadays so that many people are expecting too much with this amount of e-mails. And it stroke us that our website became a bit confused after spontaneous changes in recent times. At the moment we are reworking it to make it more understandable for people being interested in it.
If you want information about special aspects of our work, we are quite happy to answer your questions via our e-mail address:  email hidden; JavaScript is required.
The personal contact to our friends is very important for us and I’ll do everything I can to give you all the information you want.

A short review over our activities here on site in Bulgaria

Our aim is to reach the children through the love of Christ. But the spoken word has to stay back for the acting love of Christ for the neighbour which is to make the light in the dark continuously shine in the ghetto. This light in the dark is a spiritual strength, which is not dependent on man but on the holy spirit, who finds room in me and my collaborators by our confession to Jesus because we want to live out the strength of the holy spirit.
If we wanted to do our work out of ourselves we wouldn’t be able to manage. In all our work GOD is to be praised. Christ’s love is lived in the community of men/women. The smallest but intimate and therefore very important  part of human communities is the family, the next important community is the parish. In the family a child learns the first steps into life and gets to know Christ’s love through the parents and brothers and sisters. So much the worse it is for a child if  he/she experiences hurting in the family

From the beginning on it was our aim to restore family-like communities for the children. In 2006 we had already begun to form so called house groups, in which those boys coming from broken families live together. But we don’t remove them completely from their families. Most of the

parents do understand that it is better for their children to stay with us than to go on living in the broken families. For example if a child has an alcohol addicted father we tell him/her that he is still his father and that the child should forgive him. Even worse for a child than parental hurting is his uprooting from his origin. Man/women have two roots GOD and the parents. If a child is uprooted from him-/herself, he/she lives against him-/herself, there is no way of healing that. Therefore we teach the children to forgive and we leave it to the child to be at home whenever he/she wants it. Most of the children pop in home for some time to show  their parents that they are still there.  But otherwise they voluntarily stay in their house groups day and night.
In the meantime we have three house groups in which 7 to 12 children live, the youngest are 8 years old and the oldest are 16 and older. They are provided with food, clothing and medicine. Apart from that we care for supporting lessons and a regular school attendance. Each group has 12 members as the highest, if more are coming the group is split up into two groups. Each group is lead by an older experienced youngster. The groups are named after the Christian name of their leaders and they only consist of boys. Because we live in oriental surroundings girls a kept at home like slaves until they are married. Therefore we have no chance to do something for girls as well. Being a man I can’t do anything about it.
Next to these three house groups there are two preschool groups of children which are led by Carol, an English woman and a team of experienced youngsters. These group leaders meet twice a week to make a programme for their work with the 40 children most of them being between 6 and 8 years old.
In September school starts again and so we will register the 7 year old ones at school. Their parents are often not able to do it and even do not see any sense in their children going to school. Particularly with the girls we have to motivate the parents to send their daughters to school. We also have 5 boys who are slow on the uptake, who didn’t go to school last year because their parents missed their registration at school. Our intention is to extend this group to a preschool kindergarten, please. support us with this work by your prayers. Some of the children who are going to attend school now will then move into our house groups. This means we will have to form a next house group soon.
In June two house groups opened a soup kitchen which very quickly was in great demand, more than 40 children come here to  have a meal. They are children who are neglected and suffer from hunger and who are not registered with the authorities. Very often they are in bad health and  in a bad  hygienic condition: inwards and outwards they are attacked by parasites, they are dirty and their hair is sticky not to mention their bad smell. They live under even worse conditions than puppies in Germany. Their parents live in wooden barracks. If you take such a child to a WC he is  shocked by the splash because he has never seen something like that before. The children in the house groups know these living conditions so they said that they wanted to help them. This is why we opened the soup kitchen.
Meanwhile we began to build a WC and shower for them, right in the middle of the poorest part of the ghetto. The station in which Elias’ house group lives is just situated next to the soup kitchen.
Under this kitchen there runs a sewer and a pipe for fresh water, so a craftsmen can install the necessary supply points for the WC and shower. it’s like a wonder for us,that we are able to provide these children with food and hygiene. I am so grateful for the help of my teenagers and for GOD’S  support.

Health service

Many people here in Bulgaria are not able to cope with the health system. Very often poor old age people have no possibility to see a doctor or go to hospital, because they have no money for  transport or  medicine. So we take care of these people to go to the doctor or to hospital and if necessary we pay for their expenses.

“Solid stones on solid ground“

Meanwhile we have become an  integral part of our quarter. Muslim as well as Christian Roma from various tribes trust in us. They often even beg us to take in their children. We have already rented
more than 8 houses, huts and rooms in which we do our work. Many people think, that the realisation of our work in this difficult situation of renting houses, flats or rooms here in the ghetto is a wonder, because again and again there  are problems with landlords. Each housing is fitted out in such way that we are able to move house in a few hours, if the landlord gives us note to quit the housing. But apart of a small incident last July we didn’t have any notices to quit housing. Because of the large increase of our work we are forced to go new ways. We are looking for a plot of land which we can buy to build a house there. It is our aim to build walls which we can  do our work in whose stones are our own stones.
Therefore we opened a building account which you can pay in for solid stones on solid ground.

Administration and new bank accounts

You can see there is quite a lot of activity here in Bulgaria. But at home, too, there are a lot of “helpers” who are active as well. They are more active in the background, but they have done a super job so far with a lot of  voluntary commitment which I am deeply grateful for. As you can see from this report the amount of our work has increased enormously. For me it was a double amount of doing the  work here in Bulgaria and  organising the work at home, but this came out too much for me. So I found a lady in Germany who voluntarily organises and coordinates the work at home for me. Now I am able to give the work here my undivided attention. As you can see no money goes into the administration, every cent comes in useful for the children who urgently need help.

Some very poor children are waiting for their meal in the soup kitchen.

Having mentioned the money we now come to the topic ‘donations‘. Since I have been living here in the ghetto I have made some good experience with not calling up for donations in  public. But I trusted in GOD that he would send us friends, who give us what we need for our work with the Roma here. A lot of you have already supported us with small and big donations, thank you ever so much for that.
Please, do understand that we are not able to send you charitable donation certificates during the year, because we would need additional staff for that, which we do not have at the moment. However, everyone of you  can have such a certificate, we would send to you  at the beginning of the year. So far you have transferred your donation to an account of the foundation KORN DES GLAUBENS. But now we have two accounts of our own. But the money still has to go over the foundation because we don’t have our own registered charity in Germany which would be able to hand out donation certificates. But this would mean more administration work for us which is impossible at the moment.

Our accounts are:

KORN DES GLAUBENS
Freisinger Bank code number 701 696 14
account number: 10 252 7707
It’s the account for the running expenses
account number 20 252 7707
It’s  the account for ‘Solid stones on solid ground’ – expenses for the plot of land and the building

cordial greetings and thank you again

Frank

It’s Christmas time, the time when Jesus Christ, the savior of the whole world, was born. It’s also time to show our love to Jesus and our neighbours in our actions.

With this desire, this December the youth of the Second Baptist Church Varna decided to help senior citizens and families who are in physical and spiritual need. All the church members collected money in order to buy basic food to share it with more than twenty families, so that no one would have to starve to death on Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, the youth spread out with the addresses and heavy bags in hand and went to the families. I went together with a young lady and two Gipsy boys, B. & M. Bevor we went, I was warned that there could be problems because the grandmas don’t really like the Gipsies and it could be that they wouldn’t open the door for us. But we went.

The first address was in the Gipsy quarter Maksuda. The old Bulgarian grandma there lives in a very small room with a bed, a TV and a wardrobe. There’s not much more room for other things. Her son lives in the neighbourhood, she said, but isn’t really interested in her life. So it’s good that a lady from the Baptist church visits her regularly to help, she said.

The grandma began to talk about herself and to complain – she didn’t know what she still has. She lives in a ghetto, she said, where there are many Gipsies who are criminals, drug addicts and prostitutes. Even the smallest kids want to do bad things to her, she said. Well, I said, we have come with two Gipsy boys from our church to help you! Alright, she said, there are different people everywhere – among Bulgarians, Turks, Gipsies.

So it was clear that when people meet face to face and not in groups they can really see the other person as he or she is without prejudices and without accusing that person of the mistakes and sins of his or her ethnic background.

Later, B. said, that that granny is poorer than himself and some other boys in the ghetto. She is also left behind and disrespected like the Gipsy boys in the ghetto. But what is the future? Are Gipsy boys able to help Bulgarian grandmas? Why not? Jesus came to this Earth to show his love to everyone no matter where they come from. Are we also able to follow the example of Jesus so that Bulgarians help the Gipsies and that Gipsies – help the Bulgarians????

Merry Christmas and God’s blessings in the New Year!

Kind regards,

Tanya

Hello,

If you are more interested in our ministry, you can get a keyword and a password. Then you can log in with them on the  Light-in-the-darkness Homepage.

Are you interest ?  Then feel free to contact us atemail hidden; JavaScript is required

We will be glad to receive your email!

Kind regards,

Frank Abbas

Dear friends of Light In The Darkness,

Thank you very much that you are interested in our ministry!

As the ministry of LITD grows constantly, we are looking for volunteers in the filed of web administration, inclusive translations from German into English/ Bulgarian.

Whoever wants to take part in this, please email us at lidsocial@gmail. com

Thank you in advance!

Kind regards,

LITD

Dear friends,

Today about 1 o’clock p.m. came the crane truck with private police car. The electricity meters by us hang outside the building, high on the street lamp holders. On the crane truck then the electricity technician took care of the coming darkness tonight. 75 percent of the neighbourhood is without electricity. On the streets – shouting, the security takes drastic measures. The children come agitated into the station: “The electricity is down”. The prayer hall by us has electricity, the station – not. That’s why we schould count with a chaos tonight. We will accept our people for the night, the rest will stay in the darkness.

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS will immediately make an emergency program. The used to the crises gypsies accept the situation unconstrained. By the last cut off a technician was paid to reconnect the electricity “blackly”. But this is no solution. Old readers can remember that the situation escalated already in 2007. However at this time we and also the gypries were not prepared for a mediation. After consultation with the Helsinki committee we decided amicable with them to offer again the mediation. Then if E.ON doesn’t answer, there should be found other solutions, which are not so amicable any more. Well, “silent night, holy night”?? No! I will sleep tonight in the prayer room and will arrange there a temporary solution. I leraned from my neighbours that one should stay cool and calm in such situation. Even if  the gypsies are “hot tempered” people, they accept the situation calm.

Kind regards,

Frank Abbas

Dear friends of LITD,

I am getting more and more tired of writing reports. Things are always the same with all the poverty around us. The food prices here are partly even higher than in Germany. A German friend of mine recently sent me some statistics saying that you need 420 EUR a month taking care of a child, weare able to manage with less than that. Nevertheless we have to improvise every day, but we don’t give up, we trust in our Lord.

I have now opened ZENKO station for everybody who is willing to change his /her life.Tonight I also opened a an emergency accommodation for over 20 boys who went to work in the morning without breakfast because they have no money. They just earn 5,00 EUR a day for 18 hours work for a firm doing demolition work., and even so I can look into faces beaming with happiness. Comparing their life with my youth in Germany in which I never had to suffer from hunger I can hardly understand them.Our cash box is empty – but trusting in our Lord we can see light at the end of the tunnel.

The work is growing more and more

On one hand we have a great lack of money like a lot of people here in Bulgaria and on the other hand there is more and more work coming up.One of our important principles is not to think of money in the first place but to trust in our Lord.Poor people can be helped if they are willing to change their life. The Romanies have understood that and that noone has to live in poverty for ever. We have had 30 positive results since the last 3 years, young and older people who live a normal and healthy life in spite of their poverty. This has caused a ” wave“ in our district. In contrast to the commercial welfare organisations we only use primitive instruments, means and methods in our work. Our aim is not to help somebody to gainprosperity but to create an island in all the misery here on which one can change his/her life throughthe belief in God and through the human strength which God gave to all human beings.This is why I can see boys going to work with beaming faces – no prostitution anymore and not being undernourished. They are happy to have found a way out of their miserable life.

Today some visitors from Sofia will come to see us here. I think they will be amazed to see how life has changed in our district with so little means. It is the strength of our Lord, he is the saviour, this is what I believe in. But this belief is no condition for being accepted in our community. I believe God shows the people the right way, he wants them to decide on their own whether to be for or against him.Meanwhile the Muslims show a great interest in our work, we are open for them as well.

Chalisans now two school groups

We have split up the youngsters into two groups:

Cchalisans I

All youngsters between 6 and 16 are in my group. The are children who are required to attend school but didn’t do so. We are successful in leading all of them back to school.

Cchalisans II

They are a new group which is led by our colleague Margaritta. She is a gifted person and the young grown ups have decided to accept her as their group leader. This is a remarkable decision because it proofs that men are willing to subordinate under a woman which is an important stepforward in their development.In this group the young men are taught to be literate and in basic mathematics as well as in Bulgarian vocabulary which the young men don’t understand. 100 % of the young grown ups take part in this course.In addition to that a group of older grown ups has met under the leadership of Kiro who is supported by Nichat. They want to found a group for older grown ups. This means that LITD does not only work with children and young people but als with older ones.

Please pray for :

- the financial situation;

- the two school groups;

- working with grown ups.

God bless you

FRANK