30 Years of Miracles: 2003

February Ministry Report (February 27, 2003)

We held several training seminars as well as parallel prayer meetings. In the middle of the seminar on healing, a lady from one of the local churches stood and announced that she must leave the meeting because her husband who had a stroke was at home alone. Apparently, he was unable to move due to the stroke and needed her care. Her vocal announcement was the least to say discouraging for the healing hour of the seminar. However, the feeling of disappointment did not persist much longer. Several hours later as we were gathered in prayer, the same lady phoned the church where we were gathered to tell us that as she returned home from the meeting her husband had told her that he wants to get up and walk. She listened to him with disbelief since the doctors had said he may never walk again. That same day he slowly walked on his own around the house. The next day he was able to make several steps in the yard. God’s power followed his wife from the meetings to their house and healed him. The newer people who attended our meetings were strongly impressed by the numerous healings and the fact that none of the several hindered people who are members of our Christian movement is sick. Our prayers for healing are always supported by strong and continuous fasting. Now these newer people have began chain prayer and fasting in their villages and are constantly reporting of healings in their areas as well. Most of our recent meetings have turned to testimony services where people who have been sick just a week ago travel to our meetings to testify how God has healed them after the prayers of the Pentecostal Christians.

Second Regional Training Conference  (March 30, 2003)

In our last report we shared with you that at the training conference in February 2003, in the middle of the seminar on healing, a lady from one of the local churches stood and announced that she must leave the meeting because her husband who had a stroke was at home alone. Apparently, he was unable to move due to the stroke and needed her care. Her vocal announcement was the least to say discouraging for the healing hour of the seminar. However, the feeling of disappointment did not persist much longer. Several hours later as we were gathered in prayer, that same lady phoned the church where we were gathered to tell us that as she returned home from the meeting her husband had told her that he wanted to get up and walk. She listened to him with disbelief since the doctors had said he may never walk again. That same day he slowly walked on his own around the house. The next day he was able to take several steps in the yard. God’s power followed his wife from the meetings to their house and healed him. This lady brought her husband with her to the training conference on Saturday March 15. They both sang songs which the Spirit has given them in the past several months through which the husband has been sick and testified about God’s mercy and healing power. After the seminar a 53 year old lady from the church in Polyana, where we have been struggling to purchase a building for a church for almost two years, reported that the Lord healed her at the conference. All her life she has had severe heart problems. For years she has taken heart medications and followed the advice of her family doctor. The night after the seminar she had a dream in which a team of doctors dressed in bright white clothes operated on her heart. She woke up in the middle of the night feeling that the heaviness in her chest had diapered. In the morning, she threw away all her medications as she felt no need to use them any longer. Several days later she went for her regular check up with the doctor who she had been seeing for the past 15 years, and who for years had been recommending her for surgery. After the checkup he told her that her heart seemed to be completely restored and fully functional. Being familiar with her medical history the doctor was amazed how such a thing may occur.

Easter in Bulgaria (May 11, 2003)

At the end of the Easter service we had a prayer for the sick. Several healings took place. A lady from the village with a severe lymph infection that had deformed her whole neck area was momentarily healed as the large nodes on her neck disappeared during the prayer and was witnessed by all present. The following Saturday, May 3, our team led the third Women of Godliness seminar this year organized in the Yambol area. The topics discuss were Mary Magdalene as the first witness of the resurrection and the women which Paul mentions in Romans chapter 16. We were unable to finish the second topic as the Holy Spirit gave a prophetic word to several ladies directing the seminar toward an all night prayer meeting. All through the night God dealt with the people who were praying as several were healed during this time. Since this spontaneous prayer meeting, many have testified of God’s miraculous power.

Pentecost Sunday in Bulgaria (June 16, 2003)

Several miracles happened during the water baptism. A 52 year old lady from the village of Polyana with a ruptured disk who has spent the past several months in a cast was carried to the service to be baptized. She was healed momentarily. A 58 year old man from the Luilin church who has had a similar condition for the past 20 years due to a work injury was healed during the water baptism service as well. A lady with 75% blindness in both eyes received water baptism in the Black Sea. After the baptism she washed her eyes in the sea water with faith and God restored her sight completely. A couple from the Luilin church, who have been separated for several years, took water baptism together and made a commitment to restore their marriage vows. This is the fifth divorced couple whose marriage has been restored under our ministry in the past year.

St. Peter’s Day in Bulgaria (June 30, 2003)

Many of the people of our congregations had been fasting and praying for this event all week. More than 200 people attended. Among them were presbyters and pastors from several congregations from the Yambol region. The meeting had three parts as the opening one was the presentation of the history of our ministry as well as our vision and strategy. Then a message on Christian living was brought in the second part. The third part included several testimonies of God’s power and presence. A great number of healing testimonies were presented as a result of three days of fasting which the people have undertaken. The conclusion of the third meeting included prayer for the sick as people were singing, “There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb!” We were also able to provide lunch as time of fellowship before the closing of the conference.

Praise Reports from Bulgaria (July 29, 2003)

In the village of Bogovrovo, while the people were eating lunch several remained in prayer for a lady born with both her arm and leg deformed. During the prayer the lady through her cane away and began praising the Lord who had completely healed her arm. The lady is from the village of Polyana and she has been attending our services there for several months now. It had not rained at all in the village this spring. Several years ago as they experienced similar draught they called on our team for prayers. As we prayed for the village the weather suddenly changed and it rained for about 10 days. As the draught repeated this year several people in the village suggested they call on our team for prayer. The mayor of the village sarcastically noted that things like these are impossible. As our team arrived to Polyana, the people immediately asked us to pray for rain. It happened in exactly the way the village mayor had mocked. As we prayed outside the Orthodox Church building it started to rain. The whole village gathered around us to observe4 our prayer and to rejoice for what God had done.

August Ministry Report (August 30, 2003)

We have had a very successful month of ministry. Although we have been pressed by the hot weather our team traveled regularly and we again held over 100 services in July. We are continuing to receive healing reports from our training conferences in June and July. The people who were healed during the services have been examined by doctors as their deliverance has been certified by medical records. Some of them have traveled with our teams to different churches to testify in the services for their healing miracles. This has brought an extraordinary anointing and faith in the services and has helped in bringing a great number of new converts. So far ten miracles have been reported as follows:

1. Tonka Dimitrova (age 31) from Zimnitsa healed from breast cancer.
2. Velichka Panaiotova (age 68) from the village Vodenichane was healed from ulcer she had for more than ten years.
3. Penka Boeva (age 68) from Lulin had a fractured shoulder seven years ago that did not heal properly and a pinched a nerve disabled the control over her right arm and developed into Parkinson. She was healed instantly.
4. Shtilqna Paskova from Leyarovo (age 70) had a tumor in the left arm since the age of 23, severe kidney infection and osteonecrosis in the right leg. She was healed at the water baptismal service.
5. Stoiana Dimitrova (age 70) with an atrophied right arm for 11 years was healed instantly.
6. Maria Zheliazkova (age 66) from Bogorovo with long-term osteonecrosis – healed instantly.
7. Genka Zlateva (age 40) from Polyana with muscular atrophy with a pinched nerve unable to move for 1Ѕ years, was brought to the meeting and was healed after the prayer.
8. Todorka Atanasova (age 58) from Leyarovo with a severely damaged third spinal vertebra was healed after the meeting.
9. Ginka Petrova (age 65) from Leyarovo with constant migraine and headache conditions since the age of five was healed at the water baptism service and reports that she has no headache since.
10. As we reported in the last newsletter, our churches united in a prayer for rain. We provided a copy to each member with a special prayer calling on all believers, Protestants, Orthodox, Catholics, Jews and even Muslims, to ask God for rain. As a result, in the month of July every village where we minister has been blessed with abundance of rain.

Revival Harvest Campaign (September 5, 2003)

Among the several healing reports which we received in September one stands out among the rest. It is the testimony of a 68-year old lady who had been sick for many years. After supporting her in a 21-day fast in the middle of the night she felt a strong electrical power going through her body and heard a voice that told her, “Go and testify, God healed me, God healed me, God healed me. Needless to say she did not go back to sleep that night. Early in the morning she went to the doctor who after a thorough check-up certified a complete healing of the disease.

This book should have been published seven years ago in 2013. Its original subtitle was going to read “7 Years in Bulgaria.” Instead, it took seven years to finish it with all documents, research archives and new cases. Now, it is finally here and it finally reads like a story – not just choppy interviews, deposition documented testimonies or court records, but a story of struggle, strength and solitude. A story of life and a story of us.

1995-96 The establishing of the first Bulgarian Church of God in Chicago and its first split

2000-01 The contracted building of the ministry center for the Central Church of God in Sofia

2002-03 The church split in Southaven and what followed next

2005-06 The post-communist split of the Bulgarian Church of God and consecutive sub-denominations

2010-13 The social media network that cost us millions (of souls)

2016 The vote that forced to kill a church

2019-20 The sale of the ministry center for the Central Church of God in Bulgaria

READ: CONFESSIONS of a Pentecostal Preacher

CONFESSIONS of a Pentecostal Preacher

To Mark Alan
We know not why good people have to die,
but we do know we must tell their story…

Chapter I: Beyond the Church and into God

Be without fear in the face of your enemies.
Be brave and upright that God may love thee.
Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death.
Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong.
That is your oath.
~Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

Separation of church from politics of false religiosity

The phone rang heavy and long. It was 4 AM in Bulgaria, but I was already up. A friend on the other end of the line was calling from South Carolina with a warning of some bad situation. The following morning, I was going to be contacted by the Director questioning why we were ministering in churches outside of our denomination.

The truth was we had ministered in some 300 local churches across the Balkan country of Bulgaria crossing all denominational boundaries and gathering youth from just about every confession. God had used us not only to reach and minister and to lead, but to step into an untouched spiritual realm, to undertake an unfamiliar ministry paradigm and to approach a brand new dimension of reality where He was to be the center of it all. And we had obeyed without questions. Now it was time to pay the price!

* * *

Our denomination, the one to which I remain both critically loyal and loyally critical, spreads over some five generations. Through its century old existence, the struggles and tension between theology and praxis has been in the center. And there, in the very essence of Pentecostalism itself, while some are always celebrating and being celebrated in the office or temple, others are always pushed in the periphery of normal life, hidden from the world behind closed doors and seeking a much deeper experience with God.

These modern day mystics are not only forgotten, but often forbidden. For their riot for righteousness cannot be conceived, contained and controlled by the religious norms of organized officiality. They speak as prophets to a world they so fervently try to escape from, about a reality that does not exist in the normal believer’s mindset. A stage of spirituality that cannot be preached without being lived in the social existence. And a relationship of God that goes far beyond common relationism and into God himself. That God, Who does not abide in offices and temples, but on the cross outside of the city walls…

But I knew nothing of this until that cold winter morning when the phone rang through darkness of the night. Knowing what is coming, rarely changes what we have done to get here.

7 Years in Bulgaria: CONFESSIONS of a Pentecostal Preacher
by Dony K. Donev, D.Min.
Upcoming Releases for United States (October, 2020)