NCM 2018 Bulgaria

Our trip took us to far away Bulgaria, where we represented the Hungarian BIKA camp and gear services at the annual National Coordinators Meeting (NCM), where more than 12 countries are represented every year.

Our journey began with a short 13 hour drive. In Bulgaria, we stayed in Gorna Oryahovitsa, where we started the 4 days ahead with a short city tour. Each day during the NCM we started with worship in the morning, followed by a devotional service, and then in the afternoons we had a variety of activities such as hiking, sightseeing and rock climbing.

As Youngstars International is an association, it is necessary to have a general assembly every year - this year it was held again, this time with a little more importance, both for the association and for Hungary, as we elected a new board member, who is the national coordinator for Hungary, Dani Kovács. We also elected a new president for the board, who is Daniel Jägers from Germany.

On the freer outdoor activities we visited the nearby town of Veliko Tarnovo, which is a beautiful lovely town in Bulgaria and also served as the capital in the past. Our adventures also took us to the rocky hill overlooking Gorna Oryahovitsa, where we had a short communion service with breathtaking views. During the tour, we stopped at various places to pray for the countries and the ministries taking place there. Those who did not attend the assembly had to tackle the rocks of Bulgaria, during which we learned the skills of rock climbing, which the Hungarian girls put to shame the trained men.

During the four days we also visited the site of the "Bulgarian BIKA", located in the small and secluded town of Kavlak. Here, the local youth leaders hosted a Bulgarian evening for us with a nice barbeque. In the last evening we said goodbye with a quiz game and prayed for each other in small groups, and on Sunday morning we all headed home after a truly inspiring 4 days of recharging, looking forward to next year's meeting in Odessa, Ukraine.

During the meeting we had a lot of new experiences and learnt many new things from the other participants, which we would like to use back home. In the course of the discussions, several people indicated that they would like to organise training sessions, to which it would be useful to delegate a small group from home, but as with everything else that we have learned, we would like to give a more detailed report on this face-to-face at a later date.