Harvest Testimony 2003
October in Bulgaria is a month of harvest. Among other crops like wheat, corn, fruits, etc. it is a time to harvest the vineyards. Similar to the ancient Greek culture, the Bulgarian people celebrate the fruit of the grapes and the winemaking process. This tradition was somewhat changed this year by our ministry team in the Yambol region.
A lady from one of our village churches had been praying for the salvation of her husband for over ten years. He was saved several weeks ago. He decided that instead of making wine this year and in the future he would give his whole grape harvest of several acres to the church. Our team and members of the church took several truckloads of grapes to an orphanage in Yambol. The only condition of the donors was that the children are allowed to eat as much grapes as they want.
September 2003 Report
September 2003 Report
In Bulgaria…
Our ministry team has marked an outstanding month of ministry. As the actual Bulgarian harvest continues through the month of October, the ministry gathers fruits from our labor for the Kingdom.
Radio Ministry
We have received two parallel offers to extend our radio ministry. The first one is to add a round-table discussion segment to our weekly broadcast in the Yambol region. The discussion will include pastors from local congregation who are willing to participate in this media endeavor. A specified time during our regular program will be devoted to answering questions on-air and discussing current events. This is a great statement of recognition for the Pentecostal influence our ministry brings in the area and a new way to use the media for our Kingdom work.
The second offer is for a broadcast on NET Radio – a Bulgarian national broadcast network which reaches seven major cities in the country. We will be able to participate in a Sunday morning segment between 9 and 10 a.m. local time.
Several villages have requested our broadcasts to be run on their local radio networks. We also have been successful in broadcasting sermons and radio segments through our internet ministry.
Healing Reports
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.
Bulgarian Elections 2003
In the month of October Bulgaria is facing local government elections. The coalition between the Simeon II National Movement (SNM) and the mainly ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) is increasingly unpopular and suffers from serious internal divisions. The prime minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, carried out a limited restructuring of his cabinet in July, but this is not likely to restore the government’s popularity. The October 2003 local elections may provoke a deeper split in the SNM, causing the next general election to be brought forward to 2004.
We have organized all churches where we minister for prayer and fasting for successful results. On September 23 our ministry team had a meeting with more than 20 village mayors from the Yambol region. The meeting continued for more than four hours, as taking a lead away from the agenda, mayors began asking questions about the Bible, the book of Revelation, the number 666 and bar-code analogies, the Bible Code and other popular Biblical topics. At the end of the meeting they all requested prayer. As the power of the Holy Spirit was explicitly evident, all present in the meeting were emotionally touched and in tears. We only pray that this single event of God’s presence and power witnesses to the hearts of these men and allows them to include our ministry work in the governing plans for their respective areas.
In October …
We are planning a training seminar event for the month of October with a water baptism service strategically chosen for this time of the year after the end of the Bulgarian harvest.
Nine Month Report from Bulgaria (January-September, 2003)
In October 1996 we partnered I ministry with the Mission for Christian Upbringing in Bulgaria, which today is operated by the Cup & Cross Ministers International team in Bulgaria.
During 1996-98 our ministry began two new churches in the region and provided pastoral care for 14 more. We held as many as four services every day. This work grew to what today is known as Mission Maranatha – a home mission department of Cup and Cross Ministries International which operates in Bulgaria.
Through this endeavor since 1999, Cup & Cross Ministries has began 11 Pentecostal churches in the Yambol region, providing Sunday School literatures, weekly radio program, organizing social care centers and numerous conferences, crusades and meetings. The team ministers to several hundred people, as the main ministry methodology includes ongoing prayer meetings and fasting organized among all the churches. The results have been magnificent as hundreds of people have been saved and many have received healing and miracles as the power of God is evident in every service.
Strategically located at the Bulgarian border with Turkey and Greece, this ministry has been able to reach Greek Orthodox and Muslim believers as well. Through the ministry of Shalom TV and the help of a local radio station, we have been able to provide weekly media outreaches which have served our vision as evangelistic tools.
As a result of this work today Cup & Cross Ministries provides pastoral care and ministry to 13 churches with 300 members. The following is an excerpt report of our ministry activities.
Churches: 13 (plus 2 project churches)
Traveling: Average of 2,500 miles per month
Services: Average of 100 a month
Team: 8 (plus 4 in raining)
Media: Shalom TV, Local Radio Broadcast
Training Seminars:
Kamenetz Church
Easter Regional Conference May 24, 2002
Christmas Regional Seminar December 27, 2002
Women of Godliness February 2, 2003
Forgiveness Conference March 15, 2003 (100 present)
Bogorovo Church
Women of Godliness May 3, 2003 (120 present)
Iretchekovo Church
Prayer for Jerusalem Seminar June 26, 2003 (250 present)
Please pray for our next regional training seminar in September, 2003. We are expecting over 300 to attend.
Water Baptism Services
May, 2001 Baptized 3 in the Yambol church
June, 2001 Baptized 3 in the Yambol church
June, 2003 Baptized 24 in the Black Sea
Revival Harvest Campaign 2003
September 1, 2003 is the beginning date of Cup & Cross Ministries Harvest Revival 2003. The campaign purposes to reach communities across the United States, to enhance the ministry of local congregations and to minister to the unchurched.
We appreciate your response to this revival campaign. It is our prayer that our ministry would benefit your congregation. If you would like your church to participate in this endeavor for the Kingdom, please contact us.
Revival Must Go On …
More Healing Reports from Bulgaria
Our team 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. Our office is 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 have 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 1½ 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.
Pentecost in Bulgaria (Chronological Reference)
1827 The British Bible Society begins working on a Bulgarian translation of the Bible
1840 The first Bulgarian Protestant New Testament is published in Smyrna
1844-1850 American missionary Elias Rigs publishes the first Bible Dictionary and New Testament Commentary in the Bulgarian language
1871 The first Bulgarian Protestant Church is founded in the town of Bansko
1872 The American Missionary School is established in Samokov
1876 April Uprising against the Turkish Empire
1878 Bulgaria is liberated by Russia from 500 years of Turkish yoke
1910 Protestant churches, including Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and Congregationalist start local churches throughout Bulgaria
1920 Russian immigrants Voronaev and Zaplishny travels to Russia, and preaches Pentecost in the Congregational church in the Bulgarian port of Bourgas
1928 The Bulgarian Pentecostal Union was established
1929 A more conservative Pentecostal group with congregations located mainly in Northern Bulgaria emerges and forms the union called The Northern Brothers (or Tinchevists after the name of their leader Stoyan Tintchev). The group later calls themselves The Church of God
1944 Communists Regime begins
1949 The Pastor’s Litigation sentences all active Protestant pastors to imprisonment, labor camps or even death
1950 The Bulgarian Church of God becomes an underground organization refusing to register with the Communist government and is severally persecuted
1980s The Bulgarian Church of God establishes connection with the Church of God (Cleveland, TN)
1989 The Fall of the Berlin Wall was followed by liberation from the Communist Regime and a continuous revival was led by the Pentecostal churches in Bulgaria
Bulgaria: Human Rights Developments 2002
The election of a new government in June offered the promise of reform, but Bulgaria’s human rights record remained poor in 2001. Roma faced official and private discrimination and abuse. Police misconduct and inadequate prison conditions marred the criminal justice system. Respect for free expression worsened as the outgoing government sought to silence critical broadcasting at the state radio station. Constraints on religious freedom remained a cause for concern. Some progress was made in curbing the illegal arms trade and destroying surplus small arms, but more remained to be done to consolidate gains and halt irresponsible arms supplies.
The victory of the newly formed National Movement Simeon II (Nacionalno Dvisenie Simeon Tvori, NDSV) party in the June 17 parliamentary elections took center stage in 2001. The party, headed by former king Simeon II (who took office as the new prime minister), won half of all parliamentary seats in an election international monitors characterized as largely free and fair. The NDSV formed a coalition government with the predominantly Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (Dvishenie za Prava i Svobody, DPS). As of October, however, the change in government had made little impact on the serious human rights challenges facing the country.
The plight of Bulgaria’s Roma remained a key concern. Roma were beaten by police in at least five cases, including a June 26 assault at Pleven police station in which a Rom suspect was allegedly tortured with electricity. Private individuals beat and shot at Roma on numerous occasions. The abuses sometimes occurred in the context of trespass or petty theft by Roma. Police and prosecutors generally failed to conduct serious investigations into the attacks. Four Roma were killed in the month of June, including two men shot dead by a security guard in Mogila on June 29. As of October 7, there had been no detentions in connection with the four deaths.
Bulgaria continued to lack a comprehensive antidiscrimination law. A study released by the Open Society Institute in September confirmed the broad scale of discrimination against Roma in the provision of housing, social services and health care. There were encouraging signs in April, however, when Petar Stoyanov, then-president of Bulgaria, gave his support to the full desegregation of Roma schools, following the success of a pilot project in Vidin. The Ministry of Education began consultations with Roma school administrators about desegregation in July.
Roma sometimes faced pressure to leave their homes. Arsonists burned down a Romany home in Sofia on March 15. In August, villagers from Oriahovica formed a committee to prevent Roma families from registering as residents of the village. Oriahovica was the scene of attacks on three Roma homes in December 2000, when a middle-aged Roma couple was beaten. Many Roma living in Stezherovo village fled in August after five hundred residents drew up a petition calling for the expulsion of all Roma from the village.
Human rights groups continued to receive credible reports of the excessive use of force by members of the police and security services. Rules of engagement allowing the use of deadly force to stop unarmed suspects fleeing provided part of the explanation. Disturbing incidents included the death of an unarmed twenty-one-year-old army conscript, shot repeatedly in the chest by a military police officer on July 22, the killing of a sixteen-year-old girl in Sofia by an off-duty police officer on January 31, and the November 2000 death of a sixteen-year-old Iraqi boy, shot by border guards as he tried to enter Bulgaria.
Conditions in prison and police detention remained alarming. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee reported severe overcrowding, inadequate food and sanitation in prisons as well as excessive periods of pre-trial detention and beatings and other ill-treatment in police custody. Inmates protested poor conditions in August, taking over the roof of Sofia’s central prison, and carrying out hunger strikes in Varna.
Women’s human rights continued to be inadequately protected. Bulgaria lacked anti-sex discrimination legislation. The state response to trafficking in persons fell below minimum international standards with women victims frequently facing police hostility.
Freedom of expression came under renewed threat, with the attempted murder of a journalist in December 2000, problematic criminal defamation laws, and government interference at the state radio, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR). In February the government-dominated National Radio and Television Council appointed Ivan Borislavov as BNR director-general. The decision was widely regarded as an attempt to silence BNR’s criticism of state authorities, especially by the popular Horizint (Horizon) program, whose staff were quickly replaced with workers loyal to the government. Nineteen journalists were dismissed from the station in the protests that followed. Borislavov resigned prior to an April 9 Supreme Court ruling invalidating his appointment, but his successor continued to dismiss staff on questionable grounds and refused to negotiate with protesters. The May appointment of a new director-general Polya Stancheva, resolved the crisis, and the journalists were reinstated. An August decision by the incoming government to restrict journalists’ access at the Council of Ministers raised questions about its commitment to free expression.
Minority religious groups faced official restrictions and societal hostility. The much-criticized draft denominations law regulating the status of religious groups failed to pass in the outgoing Parliament leaving repressive communist-era legislation in force. In March, the European Court of Human Rights admitted a case against Bulgaria brought by a Muslim permanent resident over his expulsion from the country in July 1999 for “illegal religious activity,” following the court’s October 2000 judgment against Bulgaria for expelling Muslims on similar grounds.
Bulgaria announced in January that by December 2000 it had destroyed its stockpile of antipersonnel landmines in accordance with the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, to which it is a state party. Bulgaria also took steps to tighten arms export controls, such as by banning arms sales to twenty countries, most under U.N. or E.U. arms embargoes. At the time of this writing, however, it had yet to enact promised legislation institutionalizing other important arms trade reforms, nor to incorporate human rights criteria into such legislation. The new government also gave indications it might reverse some arms trade restrictions to boost exports and protect jobs. Moreover, Bulgaria continued to sell off huge stocks of Soviet-era weapons in anticipation of joining NATO. In October the Bulgarian defense ministry announced it intended to sell nearly two hundred surplus tanks and other heavy weapons to finance purchases of NATO-standard equipment. Past practice, including confirmed 1999 surplus tank sales to Angola, suggested Bulgaria would likely export the weapons to human rights abusers, contrary to government pledges under the 1998 E.U. Code of Conduct on Arms Exports and other agreements. With U.S. financing and under the auspices of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, in August Bulgaria began to destroy large quantities of surplus small arms, especially assault rifles, but no such funds were made available for the responsible disposal of surplus heavy weapons.
DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS
There were no reports of government interference in the work of human rights organizations, but two groups representing Roma and Macedonians reported harassment and interference with public education efforts related to minority participation in the March national census.
THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
On March 27, Freimut Duvé, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, voiced concern over the crisis at Bulgarian National Radio, focusing particularly on the dismissal of journalists. On August 31, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights issued its final report on the June 17 parliamentary elections, concluding that the elections met OSCE standards, despite overly-restrictive media regulations.
Council of Europe
On May 31, Bulgaria ratified two agreements enhancing its citizen’s access to the European Court of Human Rights. The court declared a religious freedom case against Bulgaria admissible in March. Bulgaria settled a case before the court in May, agreeing to expunge the criminal conviction of a conscientious objector who was willing to perform alternative service. In October the court held that Bulgaria had violated a ethnic Macedonian organization’s freedom of assembly.
European Union
A September 5 European Parliament resolution emphasized Bulgaria’s progress toward E.U. accession but noted the outstanding areas of concern enumerated in the May 28 report from the Parliament’s rapporteur on Bulgaria, particularly the limited improvement in conditions for Roma. In its November 2001 regular report on Bulgaria’s progress toward E.U. accession, the European Commission highlighted police violence and the limited progress in improving the status of Roma.
United States
There was no public reference to Bulgaria’s human rights record when Secretary of State Colin Powell met then-prime minister Ivan Kostov on April 25. The State Department country report on human rights practices for 2000 reflected the main shortcomings in Bulgaria’s record.
November 2002 Ministry Report
ETHNIC MINORITIES IN BULGARIA (PDF)
October 2002 Ministry Report
Bulgaria: Religious Freedom Report (PDF)
August 2002 Ministry Report
