It’s that time of my two-year ministry cycle….to be on home assignment. I usually schedule these 3 months from January to March on even-numbered years. This allows me to be home for Christmas every other year and then I start the travels. This time around, I’m going to be in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, California, Kansas, and Massachusetts. After my first weekend of services on the return to my parent’s home in Arkansas from Alabama, I and my mother drove through 4 states in the first 3 hours of the 8 hour trip: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and then Arkansas. (See below for the full schedule.)
Home assignment is….well, interesting, to say the least. I’ve now been in the States just over a month and I can just now go into Target and Wal-Mart without wanting to run like a scared rabbit (because I’m completely overwhelmed). I must admit that I love the 150 calorie birthday-cake pops at Starbucks (that the Starbucks in Bulgaria don’t carry). One of the first purchases that I made was at TJMax – my all-time favorite store – where I bought a suitcase and some running clothes (my pre-home assignment motivator to not put on 15 kilos while States-side). Some of my home assignment guilty pleasures are Sonic’s half-price strawberry limeades during their 2-4 pm happy hour and looking at the travel bottles, cases, and adapters in luggage sections of stores.
And so the traveling has begun…. 
January is a slower month (meaning that I only have services on the weekends) and that’s given me the opportunity to write the Sofia ministry center proposal with the vision, budgets, etc. In theory I’m also trying to do some content editing on the translation of Wesley’s Plain Account of Christian Perfection – maybe in February. Trying to keep up with all the correspondence for churches, traveling, and attempting to stay connected with what’s happening in Bulgaria is a balancing act.
It was a busy fall in Bulgaria. To get everything in order to come on home assignment, I worked hard to do the following:
- Finalizing the syllabi and textbooks for the 2014 class schedule so that students could start their reading and class prep.
- Information gathering through initial meetings with builders, consultants, and the municipality to prepare to write the Sofia Ministry Center proposal while away. (I’m hoping to get district and regional approval while on home assignment so that when I return to Bulgaria, we can move forward with architects and building permit requests, etc.)
- Transferring over the Sofia property from the NCM Foundation to the Bulgaria District (an important pre-step before building the ministry center so that we don’t have to pay taxes on the property).
- Working with the literature team to divide out the books for content editing (so that once I get back, we can start the publishing process with the first 2 of the 7 books being translated this year).
- Doing the legwork (with Don McGrew) to find a rental space for the Sofia church and helping that move and transition happen.
- Facilitating the move of my home group to the new rental space and the over site of the group to my colleague, Doug, for while I’m away.
- Meeting with the NCM Foundation board and trying to choose some projects that we’d like to pursue this year to create work in impoverished areas.
- Traveling to see all my Bulgarian colleagues and to be in all the churches before leaving.
So, the craziness just continues. 🙂
My goals for the year are: 1. to read the Bible through in Bulgarian, 2. to break ground on the Sofia Ministry Center, 3. to succeed at getting European Union grant money for some of our NCM projects, and 4. to publish fully all our 7 literature projects, and 5. to continue investing in ministry in the Lyulin quarter of Sofia where I live and where we’re going to build. 🙂
Blessings on you and may whatever craziness surrounds you never be able to overcome the peace that Christ offers,
Jess
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