Bulgarian Audio Bible
Several years ago, our team at www.bibliata.com adopted a very valuable project to record the Bulgarian Bible in audio format. The project was managed by Hristo Hristov from Shumen, an old time friend of ours and founder of the Prosteveten.com Project.
When we first started working with Hristo in 2002, he had begun recording the Bulgarian New Testament. Our team quickly implemented the audio files into a subproject of our website at: http://audio.bibliata.com. Soon after, the complete New Testament was ready and we were able to freely distribute it online to our visitors who downloaded over 3,000 complete copies of it in the first month alone.
The whole Bible was recorded in the Bulgarian vernacular in 2003 and became the first Bulgarian Audio Bible ever. Through our website, www.bibliata.com our team was able to distribute the Bulgarian Audio Bible free of charge for the next two years.
During our National Bible Tour in 2005, we released a new version of the audio Bible making the product more user-friendly, easier to navigate and download through a streaming media server. The intention was to include the audio Bible in the online parallel of Bible versions hosted by our website. This vision was realized in 2006, when 20 text versions of the Bible were included in the online parallel along with four audio versions of the Bible (KJV, Hebrew, Greek and Bulgarian).
Since then, over 10,000 copies of the full Bulgarian Bible have been distributed over the internet. This amounts to 30,000 GB of information or the equality of some 40,000 CDs. Two larger projects will be implementing the Bulgarian Audio Bible in the near future. One will be its official DVD release next month, and the second will be its incorporation with a live broadcast through a dedicated radio station. Until then, the Bulgarian Audio Bible is available for free download and use by all visitors of www.bibliata.com.
You can listen to Psalm 23 in Bulgarian here.
The Jesus Film for Children
The Jesus film for children premiered in Bulgaria in the beginning of April and so far it has been shown several thousand times. The film has met some resistance from Eastern Orthodox circles and nationalistic political representatives. Nevertheless, the overall presentation has gone better than expected as over 220,000 have seen the film in the movie theaters alone and close to 400,000 volumes of literature and DVD have been freely distributed.
Church and State in the 1990s
Protestantstvo.com Released
Several months ago we were asked to author a series of articles dealing with the protestant roots in Bulgaria. With the help of friends and scholars who joined our efforts, the series has grown and enjoyed ongoing publication in Bulgaria’s Evangelical Newspaper. Other medias such as the Bulgarian Pro & Anti and Mediapool has also shown interest in our work and published some of the articles.The articles have established a database of documents, analysis and commentaries on historical events, organizations and figures creating a single volume with over 20 historical essays covering the story of Bulgarian Protestantism from its beginnings to today along with methodological analysis of the future of the movement. The result has been the establishment of the Institute for Bulgarian Protestant History (IBPH) and the release of its newly designed website, Protestantstvo.com.
Shalom TV Broadcasts in Sofia
Since its establishment in 1996, Shalom TV has successfully reached its original vision to become the fist Bulgarian TV network. Today a television studio is producing a variety of weekly Christian programs with the participation of evangelical ministers and churches from around the country. The format of each program is much similar to a church service including worship, Biblical teaching prayer modules. Each broadcast is designed to reach unchurched and unbelievers with the message of salvation.
Although neither government regulations nor private television have been very supportive of Shalom TV’s growth, today the network is using alternative methods like cable channels and internet broadcasting to promote Christian values, educate Bulgarians of the truths of the Bible and bring to a realization a dynamic vision of hope and restoration.Today, the network operates in 7 large Bulgarian cities with Christian programs broadcasted around the clock. In the beginning of February, Shalom TV was finally able to sign a contract with a TV station in the capital Sofia and begun broadcasting immediately. The priority of this project is understood since the 2.5 million people live in the capital’s area and are becoming potential viewers of Shalom TV’s Christian shows. A much larger audience is likely probable, since the TV station from the capital Sofia is retranslated and broadcasted by a large number of local TV station and cable networks around the country.
Bibliata.com National Tour: 44 Baptized with the Holy Ghost
We launched the tour on August 13 at the Karandila Pentecostal Youth Camp near Sliven (in Southern Bulgaria). The camp is a historical meeting place for Pentecostal youth that was established before World War II. We participated in the Friday night service where 44 were baptized with the Holy Spirit. Additionally, 20 were baptized with the Holy Spirit at the Black Sea camp the previous week. Unfortunately, we were unable to attend that camp due to our late arrival in Bulgaria at the end of July.
