 |
Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms |
|
|
|
Kostov prayer letter –
October 2004 www.kmission.netfirms.com
In this issue:
(Note: when opening pages with photos, please,
allow time for the pictures to download.)
Dear friends,
Thank your for your prayers and your support in the last two months.
Here is a brief report on our ministry during that period. We feel excited that
God is bringing our work to a new level of understanding and fruitfulness!
Our team gathered in Sofia: Stuart and Nigel flew from Wales to join us;
Yavor drove over from Vidin; and Nevena, in Sofia, called around and hired a
Christian lady, Milena, to serve as our translator. Together with them we
headed off toward Silistra.
We added to the number as we picked up a family who’s supporting our
work with prayer and putting the teachings and sermons we deliver from tapes onto
MP3 CD’s. Yavor went with his car, to Russe to meet a group of 6 young
Romanians whom Stuart had invited to attend the conference. Thus, slowly, there
was a build-up of team members. We felt God build-up His presence as well. The
church welcomed us as they knew us from our previous conference and from our
ministry web-site which I started in February 2004.
The purpose of these conferences is for us to come together with other
believers and to encourage them and challenge them with teaching of the Word of
God, fellowship and by releasing specific words from the Holy Spirit for
individuals and for the church.
There were financial challenges as well. Yavor and I were to cover the
expenses for the team on the Bulgarian side—gas and hotel accommodation. We
were hoping that God would cover our food. Yet, we were ready to go by one
small meal a day if needed. The saints in Silistra are not rich but they did a
couple of collections which helped with the team’s food. I had warned the
Bulgarian team members to be ready to live on as little food as they could
since we did not have the funds in the budget for food. It turned out that some
of us might have gained weight!
God’s message at the conference was that the church must humble
itself and repent from nationalistic pride, and a haughty perception of
itself. The messages we delivered were focused on the dire need for the saints
to be conformed to God’s word and His image rather than to conform God’s word
to the tastes and desires of men.
The time of three days was intensely packed with ministry, fellowship,
and challenges. I believe that God was moving in a fresh way. Another theme was
the honoring of the orphans. We had a time of prayer for several people
in the congregation who had grown up without parents in institutional homes or
on the street. It was a special time of God honoring those who are hardly ever
honored. One of these guys, a 17 year
old hoodlum and tough street fighter, Sevdalin, gave his life to the Lord.
After the prayer he could not stop repeating: “My hands are hot and sweating!
My hands are sweating! My hands never sweat!” I assured him that there is
always a first time for anything, including having one’s hands sweat. I tried
to have him focus on the fact that he now had eternal life in Christ. (To view
photos from the conference click here.)
Stuart delivered a prophetic word about God’s plan for Bulgaria and
Romania and that the churches of these two nations will come together in
fulfilling God’s purposes. The brothers and sisters from Romania were deeply
touched by the love shown to them by the church and by the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. Here is the testimony of one of the Romanian girls who was a part of
the visiting group from Romania at the prophetic conference in Silistra:
“Salute…and Hi to everyone from Bulgaria,
“Firstly,…thank you for message and all your kind words.
“We all Romanians [felt] very blessed to be in Bulgaria, in
Silistra, to be part God's work in that part of Europe. Even at the [beginning]
some things was [quite] strange for us, for me personal, we (I) knew there was
the Spirit of God and we [felt] so closer. WE could worship even we could
understand the Bulgarian language; we could feel the love of people. This love
overwhelmed us more than you can image it. Thank you very much for everything,
Thank you to Bulgarian, Thank you to Wales. Yes, we had much fun there but not
only. There was joy of God who delivered us. Thank you that you understood us
and accepted us with our "fun".
“I, personally, was really blessed and I received so much
form [the] presence of God in my life. I still have that presence
with me here, at home. That God' presence gave me more hope, more courage, more
love, more answers to my life, more hunger for Holy Spirit... I want so much that my experience from
Bulgaria to come in my church , here, to touch many others .
“I expect for other "meetings" were people from our
countries to come together...and also I expect that Wales people to rise again
a REVIVAL like 100 year ago. Otherwise, I will feel "forced" to do
something about that 
.
Bless you all and keep your good work for His Glory
Catalina,
Romania, Iasi”
We will be thankful if you lift us up in prayer as we see that Romania
can be a significant part of what God wants to do in Eastern Europe. God’s
moving to show us that Bulgaria and Romania may have a joint destiny in His
purposes.
Yanko, the pastor of the hosting-church wrote in an e-mail about our
team’s visit: “You all were a great blessing for the church in Silistra. The
comments on the conference go on—people are very moved from all that they saw
and heard, because they were touched and changed by the Holy Spirit. On behalf
of all thank you for all that you do for the work of God in Silistra. I know
that God has a reward in heaven for you…Your brother in Jesus, Yanko” (To see Yanko and Catalina visit the
Silistra prophetic conference photo page.)
It is hard to relay the atmosphere of these days spent in His presence
and ministering to Him and to each other. I hope you can get a glimpse of this
by the lines above.
On the way back to Sofia, our team met with a pastor in Burgas. We will
be planning a prophetic conference in Burgas in the first months of next year.
Our web site The Crossroad+++ is
slowly growing with more articles on the practical prophetic and on committed
discipleship and following Jesus. The web site is all in Bulgarian and its
goals are to present our ministry to the church and to provide articles, and
teaching resources, for free. We get a little over 200 hits a month and for
low-tech Bulgaria with a small church—that’s encouraging to me.
From October 1-8th Yavor’s church in Vidin and our small Sofia team
hosted a women’s Art Ministry team. Seven Christian women from Wales, from our
friends in Llanelli and Cardiff, put together “art days” in the two orphanages
where we work in NW Bulgaria. There was again time for singing, games, balloon
twisting, and art. And of course, doing nails, braids and all sorts of girly-things
with the girls in the orphanages. Thanks to Liz Watkins (the wife of Stuart
Watkins who is on the prophetic team with Yavor and myself) and all the hard
working art-missionaries: Linda, Sian, Beckie, Julie, Lilly, Claire, Teresa,
Yavor, myself and the volunteers from the Oasis (Yavor’s church). We had an
intense time of work in the orphan homes but a great blessing, too. Fellowship
with the orphans and with each other was encouraging for all of us. God did
move in the hearts of the Welsh as well as the Bulgarian team members. We had a
time of prayer together, a church service, and time to share food and laughs.
Jesus is good to His people. We feel that our friends from the church in Wales
have become a part of the Father’s Heart ministry. God is moving in specific
ways and we did make some specific mission plans on how to proceed with the
Father’s Heart outreach to orphans with the women’s team from Wales. Now both
Yavor’s and my car have the Welsh flag on the rear window with Wales written in
Welsh which is…Cymri. (Check out photos from the orphan ministry here.) We
had financial challenges, too. We had no funds for the orphan work and did not
know how to support the trip. However, God moved one of our team members to donate
200 BGN (about $130 USD) and we had the needed finances for the trip two days
before we were to go!
Viktor has two ministry trips in the near future. On October 30, Yavor
and I will be doing our first joint visit of a new (for us) orphan home in the
village of Sigmen, near Burgas (a city on the Black Sea Coast 250 miles from
Sofia) with a team from one of the local churches there. Please, pray that God
will open a door in the orphanage and grant us favor with the administration.
We need prayer for our relationship with the team of local Christians. We want
to encourage them and support them to the extent possible and help them grow in
vision, faith and Scriptural understanding of the ministry.
On the next day we will be ministering in a church in Varna and having
initial meetings to see when we can hold a prophetic conference there. In the
evening, the same day, we will be in Shumen, meeting members of our team and
setting up plans for s training seminar of local Christians in the prophetic
and team work.
The second week of November our team will congregate at the Bucharest
airport. Yavor and I will be traveling by car from Bulgaria and Stuart and a
ministry partner will join us in Bucharest. Together we will drive 7 hours
north of the Romanian capital for a week’s visit with Romanian brothers in the
town of Iasi. Stuart has a long-term relationship with the church and its
leaders there. It will be a time of ministry, fellowship and seeking God’s
voice on His plan for his church in Romania and neighboring Bulgaria. Please,
pray for God to open doors of friendship, vision and new territories for the
Gospel during those trips.
Freedom for All
Somehow, Religious Freedom work gets done, too. I recently published a
series of two articles in the small national evangelical newspaper on the role
of the church in church-state relations and its effect on freedom of religion.
We had to shrink our project “Freedom for All” since we did not get all
the funds that we were hoping for. Thus, we will hold a Roundtable in March of
2005 only with Bulgarian participants. (The initial plans involved participants
also from Romania and Serbia). We will publish a quarterly web magazine
discussing freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. I must add that for
many Christians, religious freedom is not a “real” ministry. It depends on the
spirit behind such work, however. It may be indeed a humanistic attempt to
bring all faiths together and promote that tolerance will set you free and not
the truth, as it is in Christ. Or it could be a Holy Spirit-driven enterprise
aimed at securing the right of each soul to hear about the Savior. Not that
this right cannot be exercised without religious freedom in a nation. It is a
fact, though, that I became a Christian after the Iron Curtain fell, when there
was more freedom for religious preaching in the nation, not before! Please,
pray that we will relentlessly
represent Christ in this project. In a highly judgmental society, full of
unchecked attitudes, a project calling for justice, as is this one, is in high
demand. It is part of our ministry to stand for what is right, not for what
is convenient.
Teresa just had her… birthday (well, she’s in her 30s still) and we are
expecting a third child again. She’s homeschooling the boys who now get
financial support from their parents for every 5 hours of reading time on their
own. They are reading a storm, Bulgarian or English, no matter what. Amazing
what money can do for education!
Thank you all for your financial and spiritual support. We must tell you
again that you are a vital part of our ministry here with your love, with you
prayers and your monetary gifts!
In Jesus,
Viktor and Teresa
Please, visit our website
for more photos and information: http://kmission.netfirms.com. We are
grateful to all of you who pray for our work and give generously. The work we do is possible due to the
sacrificial giving of God’s people.
To support us financially, mail checks to: Door of Hope International S-15 PO Box 303, Glendale, CA
91209-9984. To use your credit card click here. To subscribe to our e-mail newsletter
write to vikkostov@hotmail.com with the text “send prayer letter” in the subject
line or in the body of the message. To
unsubscribe write: “stop prayer letter.”