NEW Book – Tastes of Europe: 104 Traditional Recipes of Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia & More (Paperback)
Europe has a very rich history and is a place many aspire to visit. To walk its cobblestone streets, see the majesty of the Eiffel Tower or tour the ancient ruins of Rome are only but a few wondrous adventures one can partake in Europe. The tastes of Europe are all the same intriguing. European cuisine is filled with depths of flavor implementing fresh seasonal ingredients while being influenced by hundreds of different cultures and as many years of technique and mastery.
Now you can enjoy this unique culinary culture of intriguing dishes from all over Europe right in the comfort of your own home. From the distinctive desserts of Czechoslovakian Blueberry Bublanina and Lithuanian Poppy Seed Cookies to the heavenly flavors of more traditional meals like Sautéed Sauerkraut with Pork and Mini Meatball Soup, Tastes of Europe includes delicious exciting recipes that are easy for all to prepare. This cookbook features 104 authentic recipes of Europe with an emphasis on Eastern European flavors and Bulgarian cuisine. Among other featured countries are France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia.
Some of these dishes are distant relatives to ones found in ancient Roman manuscripts believed to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century AD. Others are among those far before the time of Christ. With nearly every dish comes a story and custom. This cookbook attempts to preserve these century year old stories for many years to come so they can continue to be passed down.
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Alive, Alive
“When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”
2 Timothy 1:5
My Grandma, Todorka Mindova, was one of the first Sunday school teachers in the Bulgarian Pentecostal Union. After successfully graduating from a training course in the city of Sliven led by Donka Kinareva and personally organized by Dr. Nicolas Nikolov, she was allowed to minister in the denomination. But for grandma, the faith was more than teaching or a sermon. It was life. Many Bulgarian Pentecostal ministers can testify to the effectiveness of her ministry. And for her constant fasting and thousands of answered prayers I could write a book.
But far more interesting for me as a child was the fact that being a Sunday school teacher, Grandma never tried to preach to me. In the hardest moments of life she would only confess these words, which I have remembered from my childhood: “We serve a living God.” More was not needed. For Grandma preached with her life.
This I know from personal experience, because after she had been interceding for me in prayer for more than 16 years, God saved me in the Pentecostal church in Yambol without anyone evangelizing or preaching to me. There, at the last pew by the back wall, God saved my eternal soul and my young life was transformed completely. Not through human words or sermons, but through the testimony of her life in which He was revealed as a living God. For the ones who have known Him as a living God, preach with their lives.
When several months later God called me to the ministry in the Church of God in Pravetz, I met people who knew the living God just like Grandma. Their personal experiences gave them the strength to survive the persecution of the communist regime and the sentence of the brutal life. These were presbyters, who preached the message of the crucified God regardless if it cost them their own lives, because they knew Him as the resurrected and living God. A mother, who gave her leukemia stricken son to the prayers of the church and the living God returned him to her forever healed. A family, that lost their young son, but continued to minister before God. People, who endured the persecution of the regime and the hardship of life, for whom their faithfulness to God needed no rational explanation. They testified with their lives that God is alive and their testimonies were the very reason hundreds of students in Pravetz received Christ as a personal Savior. Because, through the testimony of the lives of one generation, He reveals Himself as a living God to the next generation in a spiritual revival, which changes history itself.
Thus preached the ancient. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And from their testimony Jesus Christ alone made that marvelous conclusion that no mortal theological mind could birth: “He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:27). Through my eleven years of formal theological education, I have not read a more powerful interpretation of the Biblical text. Such conclusion cannot be reached by any hermeneutical methodology, semantic exegesis or ontological paradigm. Such interpretation of the Word can only be given by the One who lives over death. Because He does not speak about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the chronological order of the historical times, but simultaneously, as One who is independent of time and as One who is life itself.
For this reason, the apostles of the Early Church called Him “God of our fathers”, having the understanding that the faith in the living God is handed down from generation to generation. And not just faith, but the Gospel which finds its eternal power in the Resurrection of the Son, in order to become a living faith, which makes us live as He lives. Otherwise, how would we be different from any other religion that serves handmade idols and dead gods? Is it not by the fact that He cannot be found in the death of the mortals? For He is God alive forevermore.
If He was not a living God who could raise from sin and death, the sermon of the Early Church would have been empty, their faith without foundation, their hope without reason, their sacrifice in vain, their testimony untrue and their expectance of His Parousia absurd. But they knew. Even if we have forgotten today, they knew. The ones who had written the words of the gospel story, they had touched the stone that rolled away, they had seen the shroud put aside and they heard the words of the angel: “He is not here, for He has risen.” For this very reason, when they were sentenced without fault, the first Christians preached that He is alive. And even when they were killed in the arena of the gladiators, thrown to the hungry lions, burnt as human torches at the Roman aqueducts, sentenced to die through dismembering, stabbed and beheaded, crucified upside down along the roads of the empire before the eyes of one whole sinful world, they looked up toward the Coming One and with their life and death preached to the generations to come: “Alive, alive, alive forevermore.”
God is still alive in Bulgaria today. The ones, who were saved in the revival 20 years ago, knew him as the living God. But does our generation, having known Him then as a living God, live now as if God is dead? Have we kept the faith in the living God as we received it, so we can give it to our children? And how do we preach the living God? With quarrels, divisions and divorce or with the power of our testimony? So that the generations may say about us that we have preached with our lives. And not just our small, poor and mortal life, but His: the eternal life of the living God. For, “Alive, alive, alive forevermore. Jesus is alive.”
San Francisco, 2009
Cooking Traditions of Bulgaria, Second Edition (now on Kindle)
Bulgarian cuisine is distinct, yet eclectic at the same time with Mediterranean influence and flavors of its surrounding countries. Bulgaria borders the Black Sea, between Romania and Turkey. Greece is also a neighbor, along with Serbia and Macedonia to the west. This cookbook features 50 personal, but authentic recipes in attempts to further the tradition of keeping alive century old recipes of Bulgarian cuisine. I have tried to keep the recipes as authentic as possible with using American based ingredients and with every dish, dessert or drink there is a story to be told…
Preview and Purchase Your Copy at: Amazon Kindle Store
90 Years Ago Pastor Nicholas Nikolov Established the Pentecostal Union of Bulgaria
By the fall of 1927 the Pentecostal revival from Bourgas extended to several outreaches. Appropriate recognition was given by the General Council of the Assemblies of God in their September, 1927 meeting. The Latter Rain Evangel also reported revival in Bulgaria, workers trained at the Bible School and a good number saved and baptized with the Holy Spirit.
With this avid success and the arrival of Nikolov’s first-born son on November 9, 1927 came the second attempt to unite Bulgarian Pentecostals. A preliminary meeting was held in February of 1928 in Rouse where the Union’s establishing meeting was scheduled for March 28 in Bourgas.
To no surprise, only 14 delegates representing five congregations attended. The delegates voted and received the Union’s by-laws and statement of faith, based on the same documents by the Assemblies of God in America. The first annual conference of the new Union followed in October in Varna. A national General Council was set and the Executive Committee was chaired by Pastor Nikolov – at the time of his appointment he was only 28 years of age.
Trained in the United States and familiar with the Assemblies of God structure, Nikolov purposed to replicate the same organization in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, most Bulgarian Pentecostals in 1928 did not have a clear perception of the Assemblies of God and hardly felt part of the denomination. With only 20 members, the new organization was a small minority and did not represent the vast diversity within Bulgarian Pentecostalism at the time. Neither did it cause the split among Bulgarian Pentecostals as often held. The official registration of the Pentecostal Union simply confirmed the deepening division among Pentecostals in Bulgaria that had taken place since Zaplishny was deported in 1924.
Ancient Recipes of Bulgaria now for Kindle
Ancient Recipes of Bulgaria, Second Edition
By Evdokia Krusteva
This cookbook features nearly two dozen truly ancient recipes of Bulgarian cooking. Some of these dishes are distant relatives to ones found in ancient Roman manuscripts believed to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century AD. Others are among those far before the time of Christ. As Bulgaria is a country of oral history, recipes are typically not written, but passed down from one generation to the next by experiencing the method of preparation. With nearly every dish in Bulgarian cooking comes a story and custom. This cookbook attempts to preserve these century year old stories for many years to come so they can continue to be passed down.
Pastor Nicholas Nikolov was born on March 15, 1900
In 2018, the Pentecostal Union in Bulgaria (Assemblies of God) is celebrating 90 years since its establishment. The story of the Pentecostal movement in Bulgaria is intrinsically connected with the life and ministry of Nicholas Nikolov. Pastor Nikolov was born in Bourgas, Bulgaria on March 15, 1900. His life story unfolds as following:
- 1900 Born in Karnobat near Bourgas, Bulgaria
- 1914 Saved in the Congregational Church in Bourgas
- 1919 Under the ministry of Paul Mishkoff
- 1920 Attended university in New York
- 1921 Baptized with the Holy Spirit
- 1924 Married and working at Bethel
- 1926 Ordained and appointed by AG
- 1927 Led Pentecostal revival in Bourgas, Bulgaria
- 1928 Established the Pentecostal Union of Bulgaria (Assemblies of God)
- 1931 Returned to the States and earned a master’s degree
- 1935 Headed Assemblies of God training school in Gdansk, Poland
- 1938 Returned to Bulgaria after forced out of Poland by the Nazis
- 1939 Returned to the United States after forced out of Bulgaria by the Nazis
- 1941 President of Metropolitan Bible Institute
- 1947 Pastored in North Bergen, NJ
- 1950 President of New England Bible Institute
- 1952 Faculty at Central Bible Institute in Springfield, Missouri
- 1956 Earned a Ph.D. degree from the Biblical Seminary in New York
- 1961 Retired due to sickness
- 1964 Passed to Glory
A Church Assessment Can Change Your Church
March 10, 2018 by Cup&Cross
Filed under Featured, News, Publication, Research
Failure to thoroughly or consistently review aspects of the church will have a negative impact on the organisation in multiple ways. In contrast, when a church embraces an intentional review process there are a number of benefits:
1. An intentional church assessment process provides key information that can be catalytic for the growth of the church.
2. An intentional church assessment process ensures the church does not drift from its mission.
3. An intentional church assessment process uses the vision as motivation for change.
4. An intentional church assessment process protects the culture by ensuring it is not neglected in the busyness of activity.
5. An intentional church assessment process will identify when the systems or structure are no longer serving the vision.
6. An intentional church assessment process creates accountability for the achievement of strategic goals.
European Delights: A Sweet Journey Through Europe (now on Kindle)
Cakes, cookies, custards, puddings, candies, fried dough, pies and pastries. From the unconventional, recipes of Albanian Walnut Lemon Cake and Lithuanian Poppy Seed Cookies to the classic Tiramisu and Macaroon recipes, this cookbook takes your taste buds on a sweet journey throughout Europe. Desserts have come a long way since the dried fruits of the ancient civilizations as the first candies to soufflés and cakes once sugar began to be manufactured in the Middle Ages. This cookbook contains some of both the simple and more advanced recipes of Europe. It features 40 authentic dessert recipes representing nearly every European country and with each recipe there is a story to tell. The word “dessert” originated from the French word desservir “to clean the table” and these delights will make you want to clean your table a bit faster.
Preview and purchase today on: Amazon Kindle Store
BibleTech 2018
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