The Olympic Games have given us the unusual privilege of seeing the American flag and hearing our national anthem while living in Bulgaria. Several times the tears flowed freely as we thought about our cherished homeland.
Often people here ask us about our lives in America. Recently, I was describing my work with Hospice. Illya gasped, "In America they help with everything!" Of course, many Americans have unmet needs; we are a long way from being a perfect society. But people here have wept as we have talked about community organizations with which we have worked or volunteered: Cardinal Center, Kosciusko Home Care & Hospice, Kosciusko Senior Services, United Way, YMCA and others. Bulgarians can not quite understand that almost all social service organizations were originally started by groups of volunteers.
Boris told us that in Bulgaria people just don't care enough about the problems of others to start an organization. And if someone actually cared enough and had sufficient motivation to start a service, no one would give money to fund it. With the level of corruption throughout the nation, Bulgarians would be certain that contributions would be stolen by the organizers instead of being used to help anyone. What a sad commentary.
We enjoy our work in this former communist country in southeastern Europe. But daily, sometimes every minute, we are reminded of how privileged we were to live 29 years in Warsaw, Indiana, USA.
