Ministry

Dear apostle George and covenant partners in the Gospel in Macedonia, First of all I send blessings to you in the name of Jesus for the coming year 2008. May the Lord be with, guide you, give you wisdom and strength in serving Him. May you and your families prosper in Him in every way. For His glory, amen.

I want to thank you for everything that you have done in different ways helping the growth and strengthening of the Kingdom of God in Macedonia in the last year.

For us here, it was a very challenging year. Many problems, sufferings, but also many victories.

One of the major things that was happening with us was the right positioning of our church. As most of you know, our main ministry was among the poor Roma people in Shutka and some other places in Macedonia. This year a change happened in the spirit of the church and the Lord started to establish us as a national network of churches in Macedonia. Still most of the believers we have are Roma believers, but it is important to mentioned that this year many Macedonians also were added to the church. During this process a new church was planted in Skopje, which I believe in the coming few years will grow into a strong city church.

Just to remind you that at the moment we lead and oversee our network of 5 churches: - Shutka church; Roma church in the Roma area of Skopje, around 100 believers; 60-80 Sunday attendance, 6 cell groups. - Skopje church; mostly Macedonians, church in the center of Skopje, around 30 believers; attendance 15-20, 4 cell groups (that will start very soon). - Kumanovo church; mixed ethnic church in the city Kumanovo, around 20 believers; attendance 10-15. - Sveti Nikole church; mixed ethnic church in the city Sveti Nikole, around 20 believers; attendance 10-15. - Prilep church; Macedonian church, around 10 people, attendance around 5-10 people.

We have also all together around 40-60 children coming to children meetings, alone or with their parents on the meetings in the different churches.

There are also around 30-50 more Roma believers from different areas in Skopje that are not coming at the moment to our church meetings, but to some extend still count as part of our church. This year we had around 15-20 new people (already saved, mostly Macedonians) joining our churches. Some of them were backslidden, some confused or could not fit in the churches they were going to.

They are all very happy now and grow in the Lord.

We hade around 20-30 new converts, and around 10-15 of them were baptized in water. It is not so many, but yet praise God for every soul that got saved.

One of our main focuses this year was not so much on evangelism or starting new churches, but on prayer and on building leadership. At the moment I lead one leadership cell group in Shutka with 6 leaders, and a one leadership cell group in Skopje with 4 leaders. Vesna also is leading one women leadership cell group in Shutka with 8 women. We were investing in these people not just the Word of God and our prayers, but also our lives. We were together with these people in our ups and downs, so the Lord is building a nice team. I believe we will see more practical fruit from this in the coming years.

Concerning positioning our church we did also a lot of intercession prayer meetings for the church and for our nation and slowly we are heading toward organizing a network of prayer, and also establishing a group of intercessors that will pray regularly. We had also a lot of morning prayer meetings, fasting and seeking the Lord. Another important thing that happened this year is starting with meetings with the people from our church that are called in the business. The group is around 10-15 people, most of them not such big businessmen. It is a small beginning, but we have a big vision that Macedonia will have a lot of business people saved and serving the Lord. We meet once or twice a month. On the meetings I usually teach and impart the Word of God concerning Christians into business, we pray together and also share practical business information and do some planning.

We had many testimonies of people being healed. We are still not satisfied with the level of breakthrough in the area of healing, but praise God for His healing power.

In the Shutka church we have a group that is praying for sick people once a week, every Wednesday. We call it "Healing Rooms" and it is part of the International Healing Rooms from Spokane, US. We witnessed many people being healed, or at least being better after receiving prayer. Also many unbelievers came to receive prayer and some of them got saved.

I want to share just two testimonies concerning healing among the many.

The fist one happened to the wife of one of our assistant pastors in Shutka. She was diagnosed with ovarian tumor, that was very big and dangerous. She needed surgery immediately. All of us prayed and especially her family had faith for her healing. The day when she needed to be operated the doctors checked again and could not find the tumor. Instead tumor they found a small baby 3 weeks old in the womb. They called all the doctors together and marveled what has happened. One of them sad something like: Well, looks like we have a miracle here, our tumor tuned in to a baby. Praise God!

One other testimony shows the importance of the leadership in the church. A 2 years old girl from our Skopje church got sick; got flu or something and had very high temperature. Her parents prayed, others prayed, but nothing. They went to doctor, gave her a lot of medicine, but still nothing. She had high temperature for 4-5 days and the lungs and the breathing of the girl got attacked and it became very serious. Because nothing was helping the doctors suggested some radiation therapies, that can be very damaging for the girl because she is very young.

Then we the leaders of the church gathered together and took authority over the sickness in Jesus name. She got healed completely in just 1 hour after the prayer. The doctors were amazed. They compared the pictures of the lungs before and after the prayer, and the sickness and the damages on the lungs were completely gone.

Praise God ! It is good to be reminded that the leaders of the church have real authority and can accomplish much more than the prayers of the normal believers. Also we got reminded that every sickness comes from the enemy, and even a flu can be life threatening so we should not let it rule over us.

An important event this year was that in November we organized our first conference as network of churches in Macedonia. We were meeting for 3 days in the center of Skopje and also in Shutka. It is important to mention that we had no foreign speakers, but the speakers on the conference were 8 leaders from our churches. It was a very blessed event, powerful worship, prayer, and messages. Around 100 people attended it. All of us spoke about important things for the church in Macedonia today. I believe it was a breakthrough event for the church in our nation. One of the things that are missing in the church and in general in Macedonia is motivated leadership. Praised God for every foreign believer that helped and is helping God's work in Macedonia, but most of the believers and leaders here still wait for others to do their job. With this event we paced the way for leaders and churches ion Macedonia to rise up rely on God and do for Him what they are called to.

I want to share little about me. On personal level, I'm still in the process of maturing in the Lord. I'm still not satisfied with what I am in Him. I want to know Him better and serve Him, the church and my family better.

This year I had many battles that I knew nothing about in the past, like hopelessness, apathy, weakness, loosing my joy. Many times I felt like "Why God?" Usually in the past I never complained, but I started to feel about some things like "It is enough God". Maybe it is just growth. Probably I should shift my mind about some expectations. Definitely I should continue changing, dying for my self and living for Him.

Also how I felt probably it is connected with how my wife Vesna is feeling the last few years. In general, as far as we know, medically she is doing ok. But her strength was going up and down all the time. She has enough of this also. When she is weak, I need to take extra prayer, time and energy for her, and then I become myself weak and the end result it influences the church.

It will be good if you can pray for her strength to be up all the time. If you have something from the Lord, be free to share it with us. Please pray for us. We desperately need the Lord.

So in general that were the main happening in the years that is behind us. The new one is ahead of us. New opportunities to do things for God, but also new challenges. But with our God we can do all things.

Thanks for everything once again and blessings to all of you,

Borche and Vesna Popovski

and all the believers from Macedonia