a selection of...
by Jeana Kendrick
"It was only a flat piece of land in the middle of a big river but it
represented so much torture, death and human misery," said DOHI President
Paul H. Popov. He had both dreaded and anticipated the heart wrenching visit to
Belene, the island prison where his dad, the mission’s founder Haralan Popov,
barely survived twelve frozen winters of imprisonment. "To understand what
father and so many other Christians suffered there while incarcerated for their
faith," Paul said, "read father’s book Tortured for His Faith."
This inspirational story tells of Haralan’s 13 years and three months in
prison and how God mightily used him and repeatedly saved him from seemingly
certain death."
Of his time at Belene, Haralan wrote:
"We
finally got to sleep, only to be wakened again at 3 a.m. to begin another day’s
work...masses of mosquitos...descended on us in dark clouds and stung like
wasps. The prison leaders were displeased because we were not completing the
production schedule and ordered our rations to be reduced...It was a desperate
struggle to work on less food...We shared our food with the dying, but many died
anyway.
"Guards moved among us in the field beating any who were
not working fast enough...Just on impulse, a guard would single out a
prisoner working in our midst, walk over to him, put his rifle to his head and
pull the trigger...Since the whole work schedule of the island was
behind...Instead of marching to the field we were ordered to run three to four
miles with guards on horseback chasing us and cracking long leather whips on our
backs...In the evening we were chased back...they took great joy in beating the
half-dead, staggering line of prisoners."
And now decades later, his son Paul, touring the island, blinked back tears as he took in the present
prison. He imagined what it must have
been like for his dad in what was then "An Island of Terror" in the
middle of the Danube river, separating Bulgaria and Romania. The prison
barracks, huts made of willow branches, housed 6,000 prisoners. Only a few
hundred survived. It was a miracle that his father lived through the 18 hour
days of hard labor in the freezing cold with almost no food and few clothes for
protection, year after year.
Referring to those years, Haralan quoted the Psalms,
"The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell
gat hold upon me; I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the
Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul," (Psalm116:3,4).
Paul visited the place where his dad and 100 others were
put as a special punishment for nine long months following Stalin’s death in
1953. The pit was a 10-foot deep hole in the ground, timber lined with clay
daubed between the cracks to make it air tight. There were no windows or air
vents, a trap door in the ceiling the only way out. The floor was cold, damp
sand. "My father and these men awaited death in that hot airless, totally
dark chamber, subsisting on very little. Today three crosses have since been
erected for the many who died."
Paul stood at those crosses and prayed, "Thank you
Lord for saving father’s life, for granting me the opportunity to experience
meeting and hugging him again, being with him so many years, for being able to
work with him in his vision to start a ministry to help those persecuted for
their faith in Christ."
He explained, "When father died in Nov. 1988, the job
was not finished but with the help of friends in so many countries we labored
on, blessed to be in this ministry that shows the power of Jesus Christ, a power
that is everlasting."
The unbelievable change of heart in the attitude of prison
officials which made his visit possible was a prayer answered. The prison
director personally escorted Paul about the grounds. A Bulgarian film producer
accompanied Paul and they discussed with officials the possibility of producing
a film of Haralan Popov’s life. Belene prison officials readily gave their
consent for filming to take place on the island.
When Paul asked what their greatest need was, officials
responded that the 250 inmates needed rubber boots for the cold, wet winter and
DOHI pledged to help. What a contrast to the past. Bulgarian prison officials
have finally come to realize that they can trust DOHI to help. Their trust has
been a direct result of your prayers and gifts at work in the prisons enabling
the ministry of DOHI to reach far and wide. Prison officials have seen
first hand the changes that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ has made
in the behavior of inmates.
Another recent evidence of their change of heart was an
invitation for Door of Hope to join the Bulgarian Minister of Justice at the
Sofia Central Prison to take part in the dedication of a book about Evgenii
Bosilkov, a Bulgarian Catholic bishop executed in the Sofia Prison in 1952. We
at DOHI thank God for lives changed through belief in Christ. Thank you for
helping to make all this possible. Please continue to pray for DOHI’s prison
outreaches in Bulgaria, Romania and the Ukraine. These Christian workers and the
prisoners and their families need your prayers this Christmas more than ever.
Note: Many of the former gulag prison camps have been converted into
factories, state prisons and other institutions. The Communists, much more
sophisticated than the Nazis at covering their tracks, removed all traces of the
bones of the approximate 6,000 prisoners who died at Belene before the gulag’s
closing.
note: The above article appeared in the DOOR OF HOPE INTERNATIONAL UPDATE
MAGAZINE Vol. 23. No. 2, 1998.
Return to top
by Jeana Kendrick
Mission President Paul Popov returned from Europe filled with excitement. The
presses were rolling and the second edition of the Russian Open Bible was the
result. Popov who has coordinated the project from the beginning, delivered the
negatives to St. Michael’s Press in Finland last spring. The Bibles, printed
in September and bound in October, are now in the process of being distributed.
The 20,000 Bibles are being trucked to Russia where Christian pastors, Sunday
School teachers, Bible students, and evangelists are eagerly anticipating their
very own copies for Christmas.
Popov received another pleasant surprise when he learned
the identity of the Russian pastor, who three decades earlier set into motion
Haralan Popov’s corrections on the Russian Bible Text. At the time Haralan
lived in Sweden and the corrections had to be smuggled into Russia.
"Imagine my amazement," Popov said, "to learn that my good friend
and the Russian pastor, Annatoly Vlassov, a proof editor for the missions
Russian Open Bible was this person. To me in a sense it was symbolic of the
project my father Haralan first envisioned having come full circle."
Requests for these extraordinary Study Bibles continue to
pour in, namely because they are virtually portable Bible schools, complete with
more than 2,000 pages of Bible text, study helps, archeological supplements,
concordance and a 350 page topical index. Think what this means to pastors as
they minister and prepare sermons for their congregations. No wonder one pastor
wrote, "The only problem with my copy of the Russian Open Bible is that
everyone wants to borrow it. Please, send us need more of these Bibles for our
pastors and church leaders."
Russian-born Marvin Ziegenhagel, one of the project’s
many editors, recalls, "As a child in Russia my grandmother often read to
me from a German Bible. I was six-years-old when she died in 1944 and her Bible
simply vanished!
Marvin never saw another Bible until he was in his first
year of university writing a paper. Special permission was granted to read the
Bible in a secured room on this singular occasion. "It was difficult,"
Marvin said, "for an ideologically educated man, who is used to saying what
he thinks to live a normal life there. Though the Soviet constitution guaranteed
freedom of press and speech, we could not read what we wanted and we dared not
speak our thoughts."
After Marvin and his family moved to Germany, he began
work on the Russian Open Bible. "God brought me to a new, great work, the
correcting of the Russian translation of the Open Bible," he said. "It
was challenging and exacting, especially the corrections of the cylopedic index,
but a very interesting and noble work. My wife Nina helps me as well: to
correct, you have to compare different kinds of text and it is difficult to do
this alone...one must read and the other compare...If my wife reads and asks ‘What
does this mean?’ I understand most ordinary readers would ask the same. So I
have to express it in everyday Russian..."
Marvin’s translated works
include a 4,000 page Commentary of William Barclay and a 16 volume series of Old
Testament Commentaries. Besides Marvin, countless others have labored untold
hours on the second edition of the Russian Open Bible. Christians around the
world who are both qualified and dedicated represent an amazing team effort. A
long list of translators, editors, proofreaders, typesetters, technical support
personnel, coordinators and Door of Hope partners have made this marvelous Study
Bible possible. Thank you Lord.
Note: Marvin’s wife Nina has been extremely ill and he asks your prayers
for her.
note: The above article appeared in the DOOR OF HOPE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
Vol. 22, No. 1, 1997.
Return to top
by Jeana Kendrick
The jagged mountain peaks set against the backdrop of azure skies contrasted
greatly with Bosnia-Herzegovina's war-torn cities and villages only forty miles
away. Earlier that day, Paul Popov had traveled through Hungary's southernmost
border into the former Yugoslavia. He found it hard to believe that not too far
from this wilderness of beauty, devastation was the norm.
Families survived knowing that any moment a rocket could
demolish their lives, a sniper's fire pick out their children, and flying
shrapnel destroy an arm or leg. When winter's numbing frost blanketed the
countryside, families trudged onward combating icy blizzards, fear and hunger.
If ever a people needed the Lord, it was this land---these people, the Bosnians,
Serbs and Croats separated into three warring ethno-religious communities.
This Christmas season the prospects for peace brightened
as the presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia gathered at Wright-Patterson US
Air Force Base and negotiated a comprehensive peace agreement to end the four
year old war. The accord divided Bosnia into Serb and Moslem-Croat entities,
making Sarajevo the capital of the latter. The US talks marked the first time
the three Balkan leaders had met since May 1993. Christians around the world
have joined with those in the former Yugoslavia to give thanks for the miracle
of peace and to pray opposition will not impede its progress.
Some principal issues negotiated were the division of
Bosnian territory, lifting of the arms embargo against the former Yugoslavia,
ending of economic sanctions imposed on the Bosnian Serbs and the removal of
their leader Karadzic and Gen. Mladic from power. Both men have been indicted by
the International War Crimes Tribunal. Many Serbs were reportedly unhappy with
the treaty and in particular with the loss of Sarajevo to the Croat-Moslem
federation.
In Serbia and Croatia, Popov found the hotels filled with
refugees, who had nothing to do and nowhere to go. There were no lands or jobs
for the men, except for the army; no homes for the women to tend; and no
playgrounds or schools for the children. Those who could not fight often
occupied themselves with washing the meager, tattered clothing they owned.
Skirts, scarves, pants and shirts hung from the most unlikely places...anywhere
there was water.
The hate, prejudice and greed that are at the root of the
war have been passed on to all three sides for generations and the only
ingredient that can truly end the war in Bosnian hearts is the love of Christ.
Earlier, the Serbs were reported to have massacred
thousands of Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica, piling them into mass graves
that held up to 8,000 civilians each. Prior to this, the Muslims reportedly
beheaded a number of Serbs and then put their heads on poles. Croatia has been
accused of wide-spread human rights violations in the Krajina region, where some
150,000 Serbs fled, when Croats engaged in a systematic terror campaign to rid
Croatia of its remaining Serbs.
On Popov's journey, he was much saddened by the devastation apparent
everywhere, but this was offset by an increasing joy that people were hungry for
God and willing to speak of Jesus. They accepted Bibles and gospel tracts with
an enthusiasm he had never before observed there.
He met with pastors and elders who at great risk and
inconvenience to themselves labored to alleviate the suffering; care for the
hungry, sick and dying; minister to the widows and orphans; and to spread the
gospel of Christ. Everyone he met confirmed this rising thirst throughout the
former Yugoslavia to know God, to read His Word and to find spiritual answers to
the problems they faced.
But while the politicians work for peace, Door of Hope
friends have been busy helping to bring relief assistance and the Good News of
Jesus Christ. It is this mission's fervent desire to support every pastor in the
former Yugoslavia, whether from Croatia, Serbia or Bosnia. There are not too
many of them in this much neglected and forgotten land. But with the continued
help of Door of Hope friends these pastors will be free to minister the gospel
full time, while delivering much needed food, medicine and warm blankets in
Jesus' name.
note: The above article appeared in the DOOR OF HOPE MAGAZINE Vol. 21,
No. 3, 1995.
Return to top
Return to top | 
Welcome
to the web site of JEANA
KENDRICK 
