{"id":340440,"date":"2012-01-18T15:25:30","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T14:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/bulgaria-towards-genfest\/"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:04:35","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:04:35","slug":"bulgaria-towards-genfest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/bulgaria-towards-genfest\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulgaria: Towards Genfest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-52990\" style=\"margin-right: 10px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/20120117-012.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"160\" \/>\u2018A big hello from Bulgaria!! We want to tell you how our preparations for Genfest are going. When we heard that the title was \u201cLet\u2019s bridge\u201d we asked ourselves <strong>what can we do, here in Sofia, to build bridges?<\/strong>  <strong>We remembered the refugees coming in especially from Arabic countries.<\/strong> Mostly they are Muslims, some haven\u2019t been here long, others have been here for years. Sadly, though, a lot of them have very few contacts outside their own group.  <strong><img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-52988\" style=\"margin-left: 10px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/20120117-02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"160\" \/>A friend of ours, a girl who fled Iraq <\/strong>and is now working in the committee for women refugees, told us they wanted to get to know our culture better and even to find out about the traditional Bulgarian \u2018Tree Festival\u2019. We met together on 10 December. There were 30 people, 20 of them refugees, for the most part from <strong>Iraq<\/strong>, but also from the <strong>Lebanon<\/strong>, <strong>Libya<\/strong> and <strong>Afghanistan<\/strong>.  The programme <strong>presented our Christmas traditions<\/strong>, including traditional food. We began with a game to introduce ourselves: a ball of wool was unravelled from one person to another and whoever held it had to say something about themselves: name, place of birth&#8230; just enough to break the ice and start building a relationship among everyone.  <img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-52993\" style=\"margin-right: 10px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/20120117-04.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"160\" \/>Then there were moments for reflection, a children\u2019s fable illustrated by folk customs from various lands at this time of year. The refugees felt loved and were moved by everything that had been done for them and they kept on saying thank you.  <img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-52998\" style=\"margin-left: 10px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/20120117-033.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"160\" \/>At the end one girl wrote: \u2018Even though in Iraq eggs are painted for New Year and in Bulgaria we do it for Easter, and even though there other differences of customs and festivals, we all felt that there is something that works with the same strength and the same light everywhere in the world: love. Our love for one another, for someone you\u2019ve know for years, with all their shortcomings, and for someone who you\u2019ve just met, who you don\u2019t know yet, but in whose eyes, despite everything, you can see Jesus.\u2019  The meeting finished with delicious dishes from all over the world, with storytelling, smiles and thanks. Let\u2019s hope we managed to make these people we care about feel welcome and at home.\u2019  <em>From Youth for a United World, Bulgaria<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over to Youth for a United World in Bulgaria who tell us about an initiative with refugees in the spirit of &#8216;Let&#8217;s bridge!&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}