New Year’s Miracle

Maria understood that God sent angels to care for her lonely brother on New Year’s Eve.

Guns and Books

One New Year’s Day, Maria Bachvarova and a church friend decided to go door to door selling Adventist books in a new apartment high-rise in Sofia.

The two women started at the ground floor and worked their way up. They knocked on every door. In many places, no one opened the door. Sometimes doors were slammed in their faces.

On one of the higher floors, Maria and her friend exited the elevator and saw six apartment doors. At the same moment, all six doors opened and men stepped out pointing guns. The men were huge and all wore black suits, white shirts, and black ties.

“We’re offering books,” Maria stammered.

The men didn’t listen and pushed the women back to the elevator.

“Leave the building at once,” a man said.

In their fright, the women pushed the wrong elevator button. Instead of pushing the last button to go down, they pressed the last button to go up. When the elevator doors opened, they saw only one apartment door on the top floor. It was a thick metal door, and beside it was a doorbell.

Even though they were scared and their hearts were racing, the women felt an overwhelming urge to go to the door. They prayed and pressed the doorbell button.

An elegant woman opened the door.

“Who are you looking for?” she asked.

“We have some interesting books to show you,” Maria said.

The woman asked to take a look and, within moments, declared, “I will buy all the books.”

She took them all, including a Bible and the five-volume “Conflict of the Ages” series by Adventist Church cofounder Ellen White.

Maria and her friend left the building with tears of joy in their eyes. Outside, they thanked God for His tender mercy.

Later they learned that the floor where they had been greeted by guns was owned by a mafia boss. The huge men with guns were his bodyguards. The man was killed shortly afterward. The next time Maria tried to visit the building, she found the entrance locked. She couldn’t get in.

“I’m grateful to God that we were able to share those books with the woman on the top floor,” she said.

— Andrew McChesney

By Andrew McChesney

Three elderly women decided to hold two special sessions of prayer for their families on New Year’s Eve in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The trio, all members of Sofia West Seventh-day Adventist Church, would pray at 11:30 p.m. and then again at 12:15 a.m. in their homes in Bulgaria’s capital.

That evening, when the appointed time came, Maria Bachvarova left her husband and adult son in the living room and slipped into another room. She prayed that her husband and son would accept Jesus. She felt especially impressed to pray for her younger brother, Nikolai. She had invited Nikolai, 66, to attend the New Year’s celebration in her home, but he hadn’t shown up.

Nikolai was gentle, diligent, and honest, but he had suffered a series of misfortunes. Once a well-paid business executive, he had gone bankrupt after a robbery and his wife had left him. Now he was nearly penniless, working as the night guard at a construction site. He often visited Maria for food and a place to stay the night.

Maria prayed for Nikolai for 25 minutes, returned to the family celebration for 20 minutes, and then prayed for her brother again.

The next day, Nikolai showed up and related the following story.

The previous night, he was supposed to keep the night watch at a construction site. But when he arrived, the other guard sent him away, saying that he was waiting for his wife and the two of them wanted to celebrate the New Year together at the site.

Nikolai went to the tram stop at 10:30 p.m. and waited for two hours for a tram to take him to his sister’s house. No tram came.

A new apartment building stood behind the tram stop.

Suddenly, a window opened in the apartment building, and a man and woman appeared. They invited Nikolai into their home.

Nikolai entered a well-furnished apartment, and he was ushered to a comfortable armchair. Later he was fed a delicious meal, and his hosts played some Macedonian music, which happened to be his favorite kind of music. As a business exective, he had developed a taste for fine things, and now he was enjoying his old way of life.

In the morning, his hosts woke him up and told him that a taxi was waiting outside. They had already paid the fare. Saying good-bye, they gave him a banknote of 50 Bulgarian lev, or about U.S.$30. Nikolai had been flat broke.

Maria began to cry as her brother told the story.

“God took care of you last night,” she said.

She gave him a Bible and an Adventist book to present to the couple as a gift.

Several days later, Nikolai returned the Bible and the book to Maria.

“I went back to the apartment building and found that it was unfinished,” he said. “No one lives there.”

At that moment, Maria understood that God had sent angels to care for her lonely brother on New Year’s Eve. God had answered her prayers for Nikolai in a remarkable way.

“We think that God is just like us and that our ways are His ways,” she said. “God somehow tried to reach my brother at the level where he was at.”

She believes God succeeded. Nikolai never was baptized, but he attended church with his sister for several weeks after the New Year’s Eve miracle in 2012. Then he died.

Maria Bachvarova says God’s ways are not human ways and His thoughts and not human thoughts. In English and Bulgarian. (Andrew McChesney / Adventist Mission)

Part of the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering in first quarter 2020 will help Maria’s church, Sofia West Seventh-day Adventist Church, move from rented premises to its own building.

Andrew McChesneyEditor, Mission Quarterly
Email: mcchesneya@gc.adventist.org | Twitter: @armcchesney