It all began when Steve & Adonna, with their two children Samuel and Hannah, were in Bulgaria on a normal family holiday in Bansko. During our time there, Steve and Adonna decided to explore a newly built road because Bulgaria, at this point, was always changing and building new roads. As they were driving, they saw a Roma father and his young son rummaging through the rubbish bins. They were looking for anything they could sell to make a tiny amount of money to be able to feed their family.
It was Easter time, and there were still piles of snow on the ground. The young son had a pair of broken shoes on his feet. The soles were flapping right back to the heels. He had nothing to protect his feet against the wet, icy snow. When Adonna saw this, she remembered that they had a pair of snow boots that were no longer needed in our apartment. She thought that it would be better than what he had on his feet at the time. When Steve and Adonna were able to give the young son the snow boots and a bag of food to the father, we knew that Bulgaria could never be just a family holiday again.
Later that day, Steve and Adonna went to the supermarket, and they felt God leading them to buy some children’s boots. Afterwards, they stood outside of the shop with six bags for life and filled them with boots, saying, “Okay God, we got the boots, where now?” God directed us to a Roma village in the town of Razlog. It was there that we found a local church who helped us give the boots to the poorest children. Little did we know that this all happened on International Roma Day, and little did we know how this was just the beginning of our adventure in Bulgaria.
