Anna Ladd Bartleman was the wife of Azusa Street Revival historian Frank Bartleman. Born on November 7, 1876 in Tarnovo, Bulgaria she was one of the many orphans who lost their parents during the Russian-Turkish war and Bulgaria’s liberation. Anna was adopted by a Methodist missionary couple, Rev. John Savillian Ladd (April 7, 1852–November 13, 1912) and Celia Rosette (Rosa) Doolittle (September 28, 1851–June, 29 1922). They were married on May 24, 1881 in Philippopolis (Plovdiv), Bulgaria and s…

Ivan Efimovich Voronaev (1886–1943?), the most prominent Pentecostal pioneer in Eastern Europe and communist Russia, began his life under the name Nikita Petrovich Cherkasov. His birthplace was the Cossack train station (then a military base) of Nepluevskaia in the Orenburg province of the Ural Mountains. Voronaev was converted on April 23, 1907 while serving in the Russian military and his new Christian convictions soon conflicted with his military career for the Tsar. Court-martialed in Januar…

Nicholas Nikolov (1900–1964) was born on March 15, 1900 in the small city of Karnobat, Bulgaria. His grandfather was an Eastern Orthodox priest and several of his relatives, including his mother and aunts, attended Missionary School in Samokov and Robert’s College in Constantinople. Nikolov chose to study law in Sofia, but when the Bulgarian Pentecostal Movement began in 1920, he was influenced by his aunt Olga Popova Zaplishny.While studying music in New York the following year, Nicholov was filled with the Holy Spirit on the night of Thanksgiving at Glad Tidi…

Dionissy Michailovitch Zaplishny was born on October 3 (September 10?), 1888 in the village of Pogachevka near Kiev, Ukraine. He immigrated to the United States in 1913 along with his two brothers. Zaplishny was converted in the Russian Baptist church of Waterbury, CT in 1918 and entered the Baptist Bible Teachers’ Training School in New York. He also attended Glad Tidings Tabernacle with pastor Robert Brown and received Spirit baptism on October 10, 1919. This new experience forced him to leave…

Pentecostalism was brought to Bulgaria by Russian immigrants to the United States, Ivan Voronaev and Dionessy Zaplishny, who undertook the difficult missionary journey to Eastern Europe with their families and coworkers on July 13, 1920. In just a short time after a center was established in the Congregational church in Bourgas on April 26, 1921, some 18 Pentecostal assemblies formed across the country. The movement grew rapidly even after Voronaev and his team left for Odessa on August 12, 1921. But a split o…

Tom Aechtner (Science) Obaji Agbiji (Ecology) Rakel Alegre (Barratt, Thomas Ball) Kimberly Ervin Alexander (Montgomery, Carrie Judd, Woodworth-Etter, Maria) Dik Allan (Zhang, Rongliang) Peter Althouse (Durham, William H., Eschatology, Hawtin, George, Keswick Movement) Reginald Alva (Cantalamessa, Raniero, Ranaghan, Kevin and Dorothy, Suenens, Leo Jozef, Velarde, Mariano) Carmelo Alvarez (Venezuela) Daniel Álvarez (Honduras) Leonardo Marcondes Alves (Canadian Assemblies of God, Christian Assemblies in Argentina, Christian Congregation in Brazil,…