(Carson-Newman freshman outside hitter Lindsey Bryant is on a spring break mission trip to Bulgaria led by the C-N Campush Ministries. Below is her blog. Check back for updates on Bryant's trip overseas.)

Bulgaria DAY 1 Update
It was amazing to see how us just shining God's love to them was so impacting on their spirits.

Hey everyone! I wanted to fill you in on a how the trip is going so far...

We got to the Sofia airport yesterday evening and our luggage was not there. Turns out that all our teams luggage somehow did not get transferred from our flight from Paris to Bulgaria, so our bags now are hopefully somewhere in between Paris and Bulgaria on their way to our hotel. We were told that that we should get it by Monday however that is the earliest it will get here so till then we are just wearing the same clothes.

Even with that bump in the trip we are still going at this trip with a positive attitude and ready to take on every day doing God's work. Last night we were able to meet all the team which consists of some men from Holland that speak Dutch (no english) and also a group of adults and two kids around my age that go to a church in Morristown which is 10 minutes from my campus at Carson- Newman. Today we went to a church in Lome, Bulgaria which is right near the border of Romania. We literally could see Romania across the river. (we took a picture in front of it) We as a group(me and my leader and the other two students from CN) were in charge of the children's service for church. We basically told the story of Noah building the ark and had the children act it out then we had a craft for them concerning that topic. The children had a lot of fun with it. After that we went to two different orphanages and did a shoe drop where we basically sized the children for new shoes and socks which is not as easy as it may seem. Well the children were thrilled with this little act of kindness and each one of them were just desperate for attention. I love seeing the joy that we brought them by just playing and socializing with them. It was amazing to see how us just shining God's love to them was so impacting on their spirits. It was a long day but it is such a blessing to be here and be able to share this experience with the two other Carson- Newman students on my team.

Tomorrow we are going to be working on the center that will be sort of an orphanage for young adults who were most likely kicked out of the orphanages for being too old and this center where they will live will teach them skills on how to live and be independent once they leave it. We are right now making this center so it is still a work in progress. If you want to see how it looks now. You can go to Bulgarianchild.org and the first video on the main page shows what it looks like now.

Well I love and miss you all!

PS: It is 4:53 in the morning here and for some reason I woke up randomly and could not fall back asleep, and I wake

up for the day in about an hour and a half so hopefully I can fall asleep again soon.:)