Chapter One. The Evangelicals.
By: Gloria
Tags: Eastern Orthodox, Communism, God, Bulgaria, Evangelism

Chapter One. The Evangelicals.

When I was a teenager I really wanted to believe in God.

I didn’t like the official Bulgarian Orthodox Church, because I couldn’t understand their rituals and language. I also didn’t appreciate the fact that women had an insignificant role in that Church and were mostly limited to selling candles, cleaning the wax after the liturgy and instructing people on what to bring to the priests for Christenings and Funerals. Dreadful jobs. I loved the icons, though, and marveled at the overall beauty and mystery of the Churches. I loved listening to the Orthodox Chants and being surrounded by scents of candles and incenses and admired the traditional liturgical vestments of the priests, which were more luxurious than anything I had seen in my modest world. Still, I always felt out of place not knowing how to pray, whom to pray to and if I am praying right.

When I was very young I remember asking my father what happens when we die. He answered with a question: “Do you remember what happened before we were born? The same will happen when we die.” My dad was obviously not particularly religious. The women in my family were definitely more religious than the men, but none of them were able to explain to me basic things about life and death or the Orthodox Faith. Every once in a while my grandma would say: “today is such and such Saint Day. We need to go to the Church and light candles for the living and for the dead.” So we did and it was beautiful, but I never really got much beyond that. My dad’s question-answer about death felt unsatisfying, so I decided to embark on a journey to find God.

In the late 1980’s in Bulgaria there was a wealth of religious possibilities: Buddhists, Baptists, Krishnas, Catholics, Mormons, you name it, they were all recruiting. The Mormons were adorable in their crisp white shirts and thin black ties, but somehow I never got caught up with them. I chose the American Evangelical Church instead. The type of religion where people speak in something called “tongs”. I will explain what that means in a minute.

The reason I chose this faith is because my friend Vicki was a very active recruiter. So was my friend Emo The Guitarist who was Vicki’s ex-boyfriend. He told me that he was “Born Again.”

Sounded like fun!

They also told me that the Church was located in “Youth 4”, a new neighborhood in Sofia.

Now that did not sound like fun.

“Youth 4" was about two hours and three stinky bus rides away from my parents’ apartment on the other side of the city. I was not very keen on traveling that much just to go to Church, but Vicki convinced me that we should go and check it out. She was still in love with Emo The Guitarist and wanted him back. She was sure that the only reason he broke up with her was, because he got indoctrinated by the Evangelicals. We had to absolutely go and rescue him. So we did. Wouldn’t you?

In those days in Sofia everybody was on a wait-list for an apartment. The local municipalities would build monotonous apartment buildings called “blokove”. They would then offer people from the wait-lists to purchase apartments and move in. The apartments were sold pretty bare, without sinks, showers or flooring and people had to fix them up themselves. Some people did, others didn’t. Getting off the wait-list took at least 10 years and as you can imagine, people never said “no” to anything in those days.

If you wanted an apartment with a parquet flooring near the city center, you needed to either work in the municipality, have cousins in the municipality or both. There were also fancy neighborhoods called “Lozenetz” and “Doctor’s Garden”, designated for party leaders, generals, diplomats, regime darlings (poets, artists and composers who kissed up to the party people), and their families. Those buildings looked a lot better, had nicer views and more space. They also had marble floors in the hallways and were generally more pleasant places to live in. The people living there had other privileges too: they owned cars, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners, therefore they had specially designed parking areas and some even had garages and community gardens.

At some point the municipality would design the areas surrounding the buildings in the “Youth” neighborhoods too and would add parking spaces there as well as walking paths, trees, street lamps, etc. That process would take yet another 10 years.

At the time I visited the Evangelical Church, “Youth 4” was probably the most unfortunate place on earth, even though it was called “Youth 4”. Actually scratch that. The “Hope” neighborhood was worse. Everything in that world was upside down.

So, the day came for Vicki and I to embark on our journey to meet God. The services took place on Friday evenings or Sunday mornings. I usually practiced during the days, so Fridays suited me best. We took the three buses and walked the muddy paths between the blocks of “Youth 4“ to finally reach a community center, where the Evangelical Church was housed. To get to the entrance we had to walk around a brown water puddle as big as a small lake, which was full with very excited and very vocal frogs. We held hands and stepped carefully, guided by the lights inside the Community Center.

Once we reached the entrance we were immediately greeted by a bunch of young and very friendly people who were giving out bibles and books with pictures of Jesus, Sunsets (or Sunrises) and beautiful crosses. The books had titles like “You Are Not Alone”, “The Meaning of Life” or “Jesus Loves YOU!”. I got a hold of a bible and at least 17 of the books, which I greedily stuck inside a couple of Marlboro plastic bags, which I had in my pockets. In those days everybody had at least one Marlboro plastic bag, brought by an aunt or a cousin from someplace abroad. The books had shiny covers and perfectly white pages, they were in Bulgarian, but looked foreign. You see in those days we had book shortages, so getting any books, especially shiny foreign books was a real miracle. I was immediately sold on the Evangelical ways.

Inside the auditorium of the Community Center we heard beautiful American country music. There was a band of musicians and singers with Emo on the bass guitar. They were singing in English, praising the Lord and dancing on the stage. The congregation was dancing too. Everybody was smiling. Many people had purple T-shirts, printed with words like “Ambassador or Christ” or “Be Saved”. They looked at us with adoration and welcomed us to join the party. Vicki and I situated ourselves somewhere in the middle. The stage looked like a rock concert. They had a sound system with lights and effects and everything.

The pastor came out and spoke in pretty good Bulgarian with an American accent. He told us to spread the word of God, he spoke against the ornaments and riches of the old Churches and invited us to accept the pure faith, the one and only path and to believe in the one and only God, his Son and the Holy Ghost. He also told us that whoever doesn’t accept Jesus the Lord would be doomed and go to Hell. For some reason he was not a big fan of Yoga.

After a while the music started again and at some point people were invited to pray quietly. They were waving their bodies left and right with their eyes closed and their hands raised and kept saying things in undetectable languages, which I was told, were the words of God. Tongs.

At that point things were starting to get a little creepy. The lights were dimmed, people were praying like crazy and once in a while they would yell things out. All of the praying sounded like gibberish. Someone next to us whispered that we should pray too, so we closed our eyes and started praying in our minds. I don’t remember what I was praying, but I had no choice. I kept praying and praying with my eyes closed. Once in a while I would open one eye and look at Vicki, who was looking towards the stage where her ex Emo was sitting and playing softly some tunes on his guitar.

After some time the praying calmed down and the people settled down in their seats. The pastor came out again and asked if there were any newcomers in the Church. I raised my hand. Before I knew what was happening everyone around me started clapping and asking me to go to the stage. So I got up and went. I glanced at Vicki and saw that she was hiding in her sweatshirt.

“Okay” I thought, “I can do this.”

I walked to the stage where the musicians were playing upbeat tunes and a small group of people joined me. All of them shook my hands and started praying for a miracle. They said: welcome, sister, pray with us.

“Okay”, I thought, “I can do this.”

So I started praying. The pastor came and told me to say the words “The Blood of Christ My Savior” over and over again and that if I really believed I would start speaking in tongs. He also said that tongs is the purest way of prayer, when people go into а trance and start speaking words, which they don’t understand, but are words which are spoken directly to the Lord and only He can understand them.

“Okay, I thought, “I can do this.”

So I started repeating the words. “Blood” in Bulgarian is “Kruv”. Christ in Bulgarian is “Hristos.” Lots of KR and HR sounds. I started repeating the words loudly and all the people around me put their hands on my head and started praying in their tongs. I felt everybody’s energy on my head.

At that point I knew that I needed to get the hell out of there.

I had to think fast. I figured that the only way to get them to calm down was if I started to speak in “tongs”. So immediately I started to yell whatever gibberish I could think of. I used the words Kruv and Hristos as a basis and started yelling as loud as I could whatever I could.

“Kribiritik hribits harakritbskites. Kribihigibirkisut”

At that point everybody around got silent. I opened one eye. Then the other. The lights came out and the people started rejoicing and chanting. “A Miracle” “ A Miracle” alongside the most joyous 70s rock and roll I ever heard in my entire life.

Apparently I was the first person to speak in tongs on day One.