Making Disciples of All Nations ...and one family, one child at a time

Reaching families, children and youth

Dear partners in ministry,

     When I read the story about Samuel and how God spoke to a little child, I realize that every child is like Samuel - children can hear God's voice, they can respond and obey Him. And even though, children may often grow up in very disturbing environments, e.g., Samuel was hanging around the sons of Eli who were a terrible company when you want to learn how to live in the the fear of the Lord. Thank God that little Samuel had a mother like Anna who prayed. She would intercede for her son and and commit him into the gracious hands of the Lord and a miracle happened - a mighty servant of God was born.

"He lifted me up" - Children challenge the audience by asking -

"Is Jesus living in you?"

     I believe that we live in a critical time, a perilous time for the children and youth in our nations, as Satan aims at their minds with violent videos, erotic clips, pornography and the spirit of materialism streamed via the Internet and cable. Every minister and missionary must go into the prayer closet and wage the prayer battle for his or her children and for the youth who we reach in church and in our communities. Many children come from homes where only the grandparents come to church, some come to church with the pain of separated parents and we pray to God to give us the grace and power we need to minister to them in a life-changing way.

      This Easter season we had children and parents coming to church just because it was a special time and there were some treats. We used the opportunity to have our children ministry minister to young and old. Maria and I prepared a program and the children were very excited to be involved.

My wife Maria and her Sunday School class

     We were very pleased to see how the young messengers interact with one another. I have to say with great joy that when I see Bulgarian and Roma children and their parents together in our church, showing love to one another, I realize that only the Holy Spirit can break down the walls of racial and ethnic division in Bulgaria. 
     We have a small example of the way God's Kingdom works. His love and mercy trumps the ethnic prejudices in our nation! The audience on Easter Sunday was attentive and very appreciative of the children's great work.     

     Why drama is so effective in getting a message across to somebody's audience? Well, think about Ezekiel and how God instructed him to use drama to illustrate Jerusalem's siege.

Attentive and appreciative audience

God had a lot of words for His people, but they were not enough. He used drama to help them get the point. Besides, children love it and they really get involved and creative. When the young actors imagine stepping into the shoes of prophets and apostles, the reality of the Bible message makes a lasting impact on their lives.      They begin to ask questions, stop and listen more carefully and respond to the truth of the Gospel. Our daily lives are hectic and preoccupied with many things. Our desire was for children to use drama to challenge us to pause and ask the question, "Jesus, do I live like you are really alive today?" And then to ask the guests in the audience to give their hearts to the Lord, because He is truly Risen! 

Pastor Simeon and Maria gave Sunday School

graduation certificates for 2013-2014  

     This Spring, we had a special ceremony for all Sunday School children who received graduation certificates. The point of giving them certificates was to show them how much we value their desire to learn how to know, love and obey God. Our Sunday School leader Maria had all children take a test before graduation day. They all passed. :)

     One of our strategic goals is to build up, encourage and strengthen the families of the church. Strong bonds in the families make for a strong church in Bulgaria. In the last several years, we have initiated both national and regional family ministry outreach. We gather couples and their children for fellowship, sharing and prayer. Sometimes, it's a 3 day event away from the city, but we also use the weekends for special gatherings. The truth is that the family overall is under the assault of the devil. We have never seen so much pain and divorce in Bulgaria among believers and unbelievers alike. Our prayer and passionate desire is to lead families to a place of worship and prayer. When worship and prayer are in place, the Holy Spirit will saturate these families with His presence and the Word will speak powerfully into our lives.

Family gathering - pot luck lunch, prayer and a more

    As we had families gathering for fellowship we ministered to one another, had lunch and watched a video message from Mark Gungor entitled "How to stay married without killing anybody". This man sure has a great way of getting his message across! We discussed the serious stuff about family life, shared out of our experiences, faults and successes.  

    Our children are growing up pretty fast and it seems that sometimes, we don't notice that. When we gathered families in April, Vicki in the center of the picture just turned 14. Mathew who's right behind her to her right also turns 14 later this year.
It's a special season for both of them, as they graduate from 7th grade and go on to apply at two very popular "elite" high schools - English language and Math high schools.

Vicki was happy to treat her friends with cake

     While we were discussing "how to stay married without killing anybody" :), our children had some fun together.

The youngest member of our fellowship is Krasy -
 he enjoys being the focus of our attention

    They also gave ear to some of our comments and opinions and sometimes, they just giggled as we discussed the joys and challenges of family life. We are privileged to see how children are growing together and make friends with other believers. My generation lives to see their children come to know the Lord, to love and follow Him. Most of the people my age have never come to know the Lord in their early childhood! They are still very much atheists today. We are making history in our churches by raising up a generation of believers and for that we give God all the glory!

    While studying the Acts of the Apostles and also looking more carefully into the Great Commission, we realized a few months ago, that we have many children and teens, who go to Sunday School and confess to believe in the Lord Jesus, but oops, they have never been taught the significance of the water baptism. And when we look into the narrative of the Acts, believers didn't postpone their baptism - it just came right in the very beginning of their new Christian walk.

Now, where was that verse about John the Baptist -
here's a tip - it's in the New Testament

    So, this May we began a short course using a resource we borrowed and translated from Current ...a Christian church. We divided the children in two groups in order to have them interact and began to practically teach them how to find Scripture verses, books, chapters, etc. They felt like they are in a competition of sorts and that helped them learn team play.

This is the Word of the Lord -
believe and be baptized

                             We actually used the Sunday service to do the course and the adults were excited to see how the children have learned to read the Bible and look into Scripture for answers to questions like, "How do we actually get saved?" They learned that we need to hear, believe, repent, confess and BE BAPTIZED! :)
 

WE NEED YOUR PRAYERS, YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR PARTNERSHIP! PLEASE, PRAYERFULLY CONSIDER GIVING FOR THE MINISTRY OF NEW HOPE BULGARIA USING OUR ONLINE FORM AT www.newhopeinternational.org OR SEND GIFTS TO:

New Hope International / P.O.Box 25490 / Colorado Springs, CO 

80936; Call: 1-800-297-9591

Strategic Missions in Bulgaria and the Balkans

Dear friends and ministry partners, 

         Thank you for uplifting our ministry and families before the Lord! Last week, we praised God for answered prayer, as we met with church leaders from several denominations on a challenging journey in intercessory prayer and in-depth study of the New Testament command to go and make disciples of all nations. 

Training Facilitators for Kairos in Bulgaria -
resource for strategic missions to the nations

We feel that we live in a time, when many believers and that includes myself and my team come to a point of holy desperation for a new supernatural blast of God in the lives of both believers and unbelievers alike. And we are not talking about trying to be religiously abnoxious - God forbid! Our discussions and corporate prayer was focused on the effort to get our hearts and minds and those of the leaders we encouraged back to a place of passion and educated zeal - we are desperate to see more and more Christians in Bulgaria burn with passion for the fulfilling of the Great Commission!

Praying for the Least Reached Groups of the world -
Among them our Turkish neighbors

         We dedicated the week of May 11-17 for that purpose. In partnership with the largest denominations in our country, we facilitated the Kairos Course. We had the President of the largest denomination in Bulgaria at the course endorsing the strategic value of Kairos. 

A day of culturally contextualized fellowship -
The theme was the Middle East

Our team has now undertaken the translation and publishing of the Kairos materials for Bulgaria. This Kairos training was a precursor for involving the entire body of Christ and its denominations, consisting of more than 1500 churches, in strategic mission!

A small step toward preparing leaders 
to think like World Christians

Please, pray for: 

- Our children and family outreach in May and June

- Our Muslim outreach in June

- The situation in Ukraine and growing number of people coming from Ukraine to live in our city area

- Our daughter Victoria and her friends from church who will have important math and literature exams in a few days

- For Jan and Stefan (our new friends) who will travel for more Kairos trainings this summer.  

CHRIST IS RISEN! MAY HIS RESURRECTION POWER FILL OUR LIVES!

Praise God for a living Lord and a living hope! 

Dear friends,

          I trust that you have enjoyed the celebration of the victory of Christ over death last weekend. This has been our prayer in the last month and we long for the Presence of the Lord to bring a supernatural touch of God in your lives and in the lives of your loved ones. 

Vicki celebrated her 14th birthday on Easter this year. She was born April 20, 2000 

       During Easter week, we had a large number of people coming to our church for the first time. We spent time in prayer for their different life situations. The day after Easter weekend, we had a special family outreach and pot luck lunch, where we invited families to share food with them and spend time in discussion on the challenges families face in their relationships and in raising children. 

Family outreach and pot luck lunch

       In a few days, our team will be  traveling to the capital city Sofia, where we'll be facilitating a national training for churches across the denominational spectrum. The goals we have are to inspire and encourage more and more leaders to work with their congregations and pray so that our churches think, pray and act missional - in order for the entire evangelical community to be empowered to reach out in the mercy, love and power of Christ. 

Prayer Points: 

- Please, pray for my co-workers Simeon and Radoslav and the participants who will spend a week in studying Scripture and praying together. 

- Pray for Maria, who has lots of things to manage. She's taking a seasonal job at Burgas airport. Missionaries are not wealthy, so we need that extra income. 

- Pray for the last month of intensive study for Vicki who wants to join the English language high school and she needs excellent grades and success with her math and literature tests. 

WE NEED YOUR PRAYERS, YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR PARTNERSHIP! PLEASE, PRAYERFULLY CONSIDER GIVING FOR THE MINISTRY OF NEW HOPE BULGARIA USING OUR ONLINE FORM ATwww.newhopeinternational.org OR SEND GIFTS TO:

New Hope International / P.O.Box 25490 / Colorado Springs, CO 

80936; Call: 1-800-297-9591