“It's early morning and 50 young people are standing at the river bank, waiting patiently to be baptised in water. They grow quiet, speechless, with hearts filled with reverence - something uncommon for their age and ethos. This is the new generation of the Gypsy church in Filipovtzi.”
This is the exciting news we have recently heard from Mission Possible in Bulgaria, who run soup kitchens for gypsy children. The kitchens only open in the winter, as during the summer the children go out collecting berries to eat. It is during the coldest months that these children living in slums are reduced to rifling through rubbish, in the hope of finding scraps of food to eat.
Roumen Ivanov, Director of Mission Possible, started these kitchens to feed the hungry and to provide literacy courses to increase their prospect of going to school. They have previously been run in seven different gypsy communities, but last year they only opened six of the seven kitchens due to lack of funds and this year they hope to open five - funds dependent. Filipovtzi is one of the five, and Roumen writes:
“For ten years now ... volunteers cook and take care of the hungry and ragged gypsy children, thus witnessing for Christ. And God started changing the children's destinies.

Their parents were drawn to Him, and now take better care of them - dress them better, keep them cleaner and - most important of all - send them to school, not to the streets to beg for money.
'At the beginning of this year a couple of new boys and girls started coming to the church services. Shortly after that ten more youths joined the group. Later another ten... and another ten... In the last two months more than 80 young people accepted Christ and full of faith joined the church. They are real followers of Jesus, bringing new zeal, new life and new hope for the future. They are putting the whole suburb on fire for the Lord.”
An entire suburb on fire for God because somebody provided consistent care for the downtrodden in society! The sad news is that there are still hundreds of children who, this Christmas, will be going without food. Whilst Filipovtzi is moving forwards and children are slowly beginning to break out of the cycle of poverty by getting an education and then hopefully employment, there is still a long way to go - these are entire communities living like lepers, rejected by society and struggling to survive without the basic things needed for life.
Please help us ensure that there is plenty of hot soup to go around this Christmas. With God in charge who knows where these soup kitchens will lead the next generation!

Sally Bertram

A gift of £400 will enable one soup kitchen to run for one month.
A gift of £11 would sponsor one child to have a hot meal each day for one month.
Please designate you gift ‘Bulgaria’.