Mission Bulgaria Week 22

NEWS – Week 22 – January 13-20, 2002 – Sofia, BULGARIA

Greetings form Bulgaria:

Just wanted to report with a great joy a few new developments in the ministry here in Sofia. On Mondays we have a home group that meats in a suburb of Sofia and studies Pentecostal events and practices in the Bible. On Tuesday we started an English speaking service for foreign students and immigrants who go to our church, but needed some special pastoral care in a language they could understand without any problems.

After finishing the expository series on the book of Revelations, I started a new one on Galatians on Wednesday. The series contain 6 lessons, one on each chapter.

On Thursday nights as well as Sunday afternoons, I have been traveling to the town of Pravetz, where I am now pastoring the local church since the leave of the pastor last December. Pravetz has been on my heart as the town where I preached my first sermon and received my first assignment with the Church of God as a youth pastor in 1990-1993. The church experienced revival in the spring of 1991 and more than 200 young people were saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately after 1995 the revival quieted down as many of the students graduated and left town.

This past Sunday Pastor Pavel Ignatov and myself traveled to Pravetz together for a coordinating meeting with pastors and members from the area. In the small upper room 64 were present not only from Pravetz but also from the towns of Botevegrad, Yablanitza, Etropole and I brought a short message on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, after which we had prayer for healing. People were coming to the front crying and kneeling wherever they found a place to receive prayer by the pastors. There was hardly any room to walk around the pulpit, as God poured out His Spirit and many were touched.

The Sunday School Pilot program is also continuing and increasing its influence. We have reached the number of 15 thematic Bible lessons, as more than 28,000 individual copies have been distributed. Beside in the more than 50 local churches, the lessons are now taught also in the Sunday morning service at the Central Prison in Sofia. This past week, I turned the lessons in for editing and publication as a book. Meanwhile, some of them have been reprinted in different magazines.

In March, I will be teaching three seminars in the Systematic Theology class at the Bulgarian Theological Evangelical Institute in Sofia. The seminars will be on the topics of Ecclesiology, Pneumatology and Eschatology. This coming Friday morning, I am also giving a brief lecture on Preservation of Pentecostal Primitivism.

Finally, an article, which I wrote in 1999 about the first Bulgarian graduate from Harvard University, will be published in the February/March issue of the “Bulgarian Theology” scholarly magazine.

For all of the above I praise the Lord with all my heart. I thank you for your continuous support, Please pray for us.