Penka and Hari Atanasovs update April and May 2019
Dear Friends we are very happy to share about our work last two monts! It was a very busy time with many activities and we praise the Lord for the new things happened in our service to Him.
Evangelism in Bulgarian village Careva Poliana
28th of April 2019 was Easter in Bulgaria
Christmas boxes for Easter
On 27 of April with the local cultural house we set up a meeting for Evangelism in Careva Poliana village. In the village in the past were living only Bulgarian Orthodox people, but now is there some Orthodox families with mainly old people. Now a lot of new Turkish speaking Gipsy families came, they have the houses and they do not know Jesus. With our coworker brother Gunay Sherifov and our church in Kardjali we organize a Easter meeting to share the Gospel with them. We preached about Jesus and His resurrection, and invited people to accept Jesus in their life and most of them about 30, responded in prayer. We use the shoeboxes with gifts to bless the children, adults and families, the Turkish Gipsy and the Bulgarians. One woman open her home for us. In the same village we already have a home group another Gipsy ethnic group who had helped us in prayer to organize the meeting. The work in this village will continue. Many other villages in the region are similar situation of changes. We are praying God to help us to reach them and have more people to help us
Bible teaching for new believers from the churches 9,10,11 of May
On 9,10,11 may in the Resurrected Christ Church in Kardjali we had pastors meeting with new believers from the churches in the region. The focus of it was to teach new people and leaders on the basic thinks of the Christian faith. Many new people in the churches have no good foundation of basic of Christian faith and the relationship with God, some leaders do not know how to teach them.
To reach this goal we got help from Jeff and Jonathan, who for years are very good friend of the region from Indiana. They came to help in the beginning of May. The presents of God was with us, and the meeting was full with questions, discussions and unity in God. On the meeting with us participated our new bishop pastor Teodoro Serafimov, the former bishop pastor Jordan Ivanov and the bishop from the National leadership Stilian Mihailov. All we felt how great is the need to teach new people from the churches on the most important things from the very beginning. Unfortunately we realized that some pastors and deacons from the region also need teaching on this. We hope God will help us to continue helping the pastors in the future.
Our Art blessed from the Lord
In the beginning of May in City of Fabliano Italy was organized International Biennial watercolor exhibition. About 1000 artists from all over the world are participating there. Penka and I had no possibility to visit Italy this year, but we also had art works on the exhibition. Our surprise was that out of the exhibition a watercolor of Penka – Rahab, made two years ago there was set up in the Museum of the Watercolor in Fabriano. On the photo the Bulgarian artist Stella Canfield is showing Penka,s art work on the exhibition.
.My art watercolor A Child was nominated on the BG International Triennial Watercolor And Spirit Bulgaria Varna 2019. The picture was nominated from International Jury in portrait category like one of the best portrait. On the Triennial between 1000 artists were accepted about 250 from all over the world. We praise the Lord for His blessing on our art. The girl I painted was one from the Art Work Shops we did last year in the villages.
.Also here is Penka’s art work on the Triennial in Varna Bulgarian Bulgarian Girl On A Sunny Day and other my art work, The Drawing, which was accepted for the International Biennial in Albania which will be open on September 2019.
Another good think happen in May was that on 23th of May in our City came out of print the second part of the book Kardjali City From Year 1912-2018, with 500 pages telling the history of the City. Penka and I were included in the book among some other artists from the City. The General story about us in the book is our Christian Art and faith, the Bible Illustrations we did for the Bulgarian Family Bible with the Bulgarian Bible League, that we had started the first private Art Gallery in the City after the changes in Bulgaria after 1989. Our Christian testimony like artists and the Newspaper Spiritual Light.
Helping and honoring BG teachers in a School and Kindergarten for the National Celebration Of the Cyrillic Alphabet - 24 Of May 2019
God had put in our hearts to prepare and do gifts for the teachers and stuff working in the School and the Kindergarten of the BG Muslim village Chakalarovo. We shared our idea with director of the School and with our friends from Sofia and they supported it. On 29 of May we visited the teachers in the teachers room in the School and we shared with them about our work in the area, the Christmas boxes, the Art Work Shops and for our faith. We prepared 31 bags for the people who are working there. They were very happy, surprised and touched, because they never received gifts like this and they never have been honored like this before. Penka and I, like former teachers understand very well the situation of the BG teachers and especially in a Muslim village School. We are invited from them again for the next Art Work Shop with the children at this Summer. The bags for the teachers included first daily need food and a Bible study book The Parables Of Jesus written by Robert Martin who is a US partner of Bulgarian Bible League. The illustrations in the book were made from us in the beginning of the year. Praise the Lord. The good news is that we have open doors and we can do this idea in other School in the region if we have extra support for this. For 31 bags we spent about USD 300.
Supporting pastors ministry with Bibles
For the pastors from the region we always had helped to grow up in the Lord. This year from a Christian Ministry in Greece we got free Bibles, New Testaments, children and youths books in Bulgarian, and Bible study books. We spread about 2000 book and bibles for the pastors and the people for 40 churches from the region.
In our region we still have pastors and servants of God who have no computers or their are very old! This is a big problem some time for the communications. Unfortunately some pastors and deacons in the churches are not very well educated. We had prayers about this and shared last year the idea for help the pastors with pastor Toni Blair and Pastor Jo Ann from Hosanna Fellowship Church in Lititz PA. They both gave us a hand of help, buying 10 tablets and 5 second hand lap tops. Almost half of them already came to Bulgaria and were given to the servants. On the photo left is the bishop of the area Teodoro Serafimov who got his lap top, brother Gunay with his wife Boriana and brother Velin and his wife Fanka. We would like this project to continue, even to teach some servants in the churches how to work on the computer. A big testimony for this help is that the Bulgarian New Life church in Chicago had helped us to delivered the computers to Bulgaria.
We are trying to help more people from the villages to get shoes, clothes and blessed mothers with babies with quilts made in America. Last months we gave help like this in more than 10 villages. This is giving us open door among some unreached groups and Mayors of the villages.
In April we started to build a Baptistery of the bag yard of the church. Two Roma pastors from the region came to help on the work of the construction. The work is still under construction, but we hope it will be finished soon. When we finish it this will be the first baptistery build in the region from 6th century till now and we will have possibility to baptize the new believers in Christ coming from the Islam on back yard of the church. The design in it will be with a cross.
And at the end of this report please pray with us for our vision to find a property in the region - Kirkovo village region and to build Art House center where we will do Art Work Shops with the local children and meet other activities for the Gospel.
Thank you very much for your prayers, help and support. We are very encouraged to know that we have friends for our service in the Lord!
Blessings, with love in the Lord!
Penka and Hari Atanasovs