My Personal Testimony
by P.G. SIMON - known as Jimmy
 

Religions in Macedonia: 

My conversion is not as many are, for as you will see I had to have a Jonah experience before I was ready to listen to God.  God is not restricted to how He awakens people, each of us is an individual.

I am one of seven children, the 3rd in order of birth, and Nigerian by birth.  I am privileged to have been brought up in a Christian environment.  We children were taught to read our bible and pray every day.  The scriptures were the yard stick through which everything was measured or said.  Sadly, like so many others, I was deluded, and was of the understanding this was what it was to be a Christian.  However, this is not according to the scriptures.

Later, I left home to go to boarding school.  This was a turning point in my life.  Being away from the shelter of home I began exploring and searching for truth and questioning if there was a God.  If I had believed in God up until this time, I had done so with the belief of that which I had been taught by my parents.  It had not become a reality to me, consequently, I thought it was time I found out what the truth was for myself.

During this time of searching, one thing that was very evident about my parent’s home training.  Even though I was having these second thoughts about God, I never for one day missed my daily reading of the bible (Proverbs 22:6).

Then, one night I was awakened in the middle of the night, the Holy Spirit of God was dealing with me.  The Lord opened my eyes and I began to see the world around me totally void of anything.  No trees, buildings, mountains or hills, and as I began to look closely I could see a direct source of light coming from somewhere above.  I tried to lift up my head to see this light and couldn’t.  Something seemed to stop me.  I began to look all around me, and it was then I realized that all over the earth, as far as my eyes could see, all that I saw was something like a mist.  Suddenly, and looking up, I saw hundreds of thousands of men and women, all in white long robes being air borne, being lifted up.  I tried to look downwards again and this time I saw the earth far away, but the light source was getting closer and closer.  I awakened but could not make any sense out of this.

Soon after this I took seriously ill, and at that point of time, there was very little choice of hospitals in our area of Nigeria.  The doctors were not able to even diagnose the disease, much less talk of healing me.  Eventually I was left to die.  All that the doctors could say was that I was dying quick and fast.

Based on all counts I should have died, but the Lord God Almighty showed me mercy and let me live. One of those days when my mother was intense in prayers for me the Lord gave her a vision. In this vision she was shown a vine like plant spreading its branches as far as the eyes could see, only the strange thing was that this plant from its roots to the spread branches was totally dried up.  Mother understood this to indicate my death as forecast by the doctors.  As she continued to look closely in the middle of the dried branch, she could see a very tiny sprout of a green leaf (I mentioned middle of the branch, remember I was my parents 3rd child) coming out.  The understanding she was getting from the Lord was that though by all the doctors evaluations I was supposed to die, yet the Lord was going to show mercy to me and I would live, live to declare His goodness on earth.

Soon after recovery, I deliberately started to forget the Lord, and tried to run away just like Jonah.  Jonah tried to go to Tarshish, I to Yugoslavia.  Like Jonah, at the beginning it appeared that I had run away, but one can never outrun God.

I started a business that went down so quickly, and I knew I could not run from the Lord.  It was hard learning, and as a broken man, I decided to rededicate my life to God again in the summer of 1997.

When I was visiting Nigeria from Yugoslavia I joined a tiny church that fasted and prayed, almost like fanatics.  It was here, for the first time, I learned to fast and one night at about 4:30 AM, I heard a loud voice, calling Jimmy! Jimmy! Jimmy.  It was so loud voice that fills the earth, yet it did not burst my ear drums.  Three questions were asked.  “Do you want to prosper in life?  Do you want to advance in life? Do you want to move forward in life?”

This sound was so sweet to my ears, and startled I answered Yes! Yes!  The voice came again: “DO MY WORK!  DO MY WORK!  DO MY WORK!”

I responded: “Who?? Me??”  I came back to the town of Stip in Macedonia with a reluctance, but knew I had no alternative but to start serving the living God.

THE MINISTRY:

This ministry was started by Brother P.G. SIMON - Jimmy – known affectionately by all as Jimmy.  Jimmy is married to a wife BILYANA and has two children, ADAMS (20 yrs) and ANGELO (19 yrs). 

The ministry was started in 1997 and effective evangelism started in 1999 with work among disabled persons.  This was a time of communism and there was a central center where all the disabled and handicaps were abandoned and left to slowly waste away.  The Lord told me to go there and be a mouth for those that could not speak, and strength for them that are weak.  Since then, I organize teams and twice weekly we will go to this center and help in any way we can showing practical love, washing, cleaning, praying and ministering to the sick.  One day we had to pray for the head nurse who had a migraine for 18 years and the Lord healed her, and because of this healing miracle, we were invited into a family home, and that was how the first church was planted late 2000 and early 2001.

In late 2000 and early 2001 the first church was planted, thank God, through work among the sick and disabled and since that time, the ministry has increased in church planting and development in humanitarian work and building bridges among ethnic minority people groups, especially with the Muslim Turks.  This includes a great range of community activities that helps to improve the lives of children.  New development: creating school play grounds where none previously existed.

Since 2000 the ministry has effectively planted approximately 25 churches, praise the Lord!
Praise His Holy name for ever!  Amen
At present there are approximately 18 that are active - this due to lack of meeting points or places to rent (building facilities) to hold services.

We need all the help we can get now because we are at a point in the ministry where we have the leading to consolidate that which has been achieved by the Lord to date before going on further.

Building a college of evangelism was born out of ministry needs to install leaders and to take over leadership positions.  For your information, there is no bible school in all of MACEDONIA, or any training facility that one could go to and get trained. 

 
MINISTRIES/ACTIVITIES:

Outreach to Sick and Disabled persons.

Community work – Cleaning waste in villages or towns.

Sports - Basket ball and Foot ball.

Evangelism targeting minority groups , very poor villages and Muslims.

Humanitarian work - e.g. food distribution, medical teams.

Jesus Film.

Brother Jimmy and his family

From the right:  BROTHER JIMMY, ADAMS, ANGELO, BILYANA