Testimony of Dmitriy Leo, pastor of Father’s Blessing Church. The First 10 Years of Serving God.
Conversion and the Beginning of Ministry
1993
The Lord found me in October 1993. I experienced the new birth while walking down the street. I suddenly realized that God exists, that I would go to church the next day, and that my life would change forever. The next day, I really did go to church and began serving there, literally barely having crossed the threshold. Three months later (on January 19, 1994), I received baptism in water and in the Holy Spirit. After that, I was appointed a deacon of the church, founded a healing and deliverance group, and led a home group.
1994–1995
The pastor of our church was a big-hearted man who loved people and constantly cared for orphans. This took up much of his time, and he encouraged the church ministers to use various methods of church growth and development. Naturally, we tried countless different structures and programs from around the world. In the end, we saw that trying to implement someone else’s structure in our church led to nothing good. For two years, the church was tossed in different directions like a sailing ship at sea because the direction of movement kept changing.
Having concluded that what we needed was not a new structure but a move of the Holy Spirit, I began praying fervently about it.
First Outpouring
1996
I brought home Rick Joyner’s prophetic book The Final Quest about end-time events. The book was so captivating that I did not get up from the table until I had finished reading it.
After that, I began to pray, and the Holy Spirit came upon me in an extraordinary way. It was as if a warm liquid were pouring over my head and then flowing down my entire body. I felt something like electricity and a pleasant tingling throughout my body. Something radical happened to me at that moment. In the middle of the night, I woke my wife, who was not yet a believer at the time, and began asking her to forgive me for everything I might have done to hurt her.
The glory of God
In the morning, something amazing happened to me again…
I went outside, intending to walk to work (a 40-minute walk). Looking around, I saw a different world before me—warm, gentle, and safe. Everything was painted in extraordinary colors, incredibly vivid and beautiful. I walked down the road but could not feel it. It was as if invisible cushions were beneath my feet and I were floating above the road. As I walked, an unusual sense of safety filled me. I passed by trees, and it seemed to me that their branches were not sharp but soft. To test this, I reached out and squeezed one branch with my fingers, but felt no pain—the branch compressed in my hand like rubber. I was experiencing a peace and calm such as I had never known before. I walked slowly along the path, but it seemed to me that I was floating above the ground.
Suddenly, I remembered work and looked at my watch—it showed 08:50. I realized I had to hurry because I was already late. After taking just a few steps, I suddenly found myself transported straight to the city center, to my workplace. I was sitting at my desk, while employees bustled around me. My watch still showed 08:50. That day, I could not feel my body, as if I had been injected with an anesthetic.
All the employees treated me with love and respect. Whenever someone asked me a question, the answer immediately came to me. My answers were precise and correct. I did not need to think about what to say—the words flowed from me like water.
I remember a man who often criticized me and other Christians for believing in God approached me and again said something unpleasant. I calmly replied, “At the judgment, every person will answer before God for every word they have spoken.” I had told him similar things and debated with him many times, but without result. This time, it seemed that God Himself had spoken to him, because the man fell silent in fear and lowered his eyes. Then he apologized to me and left. From that day on, he changed completely and began to respect and defend me and other Christians.
These miracles lasted for twenty-four hours, and then everything gradually returned to normal (except for my coworker’s attitude). When I asked God what it had been, I heard: “The glory of God,” and understood that God has more for us than we can imagine. That is why I so often say the word “more” when praying for people.
Seeking More
1997
From then on, I began passionately seeking the Lord. Once or twice a week, I would go outside the city with several brothers, and there in a field we would pray all night and worship the Lord with a guitar. We cried out for revival in our lives and our city, doing so for more than a year without missing a single time, whatever the weather.
The Lord often encouraged us and showed us signs in the sky. When the sky was covered with a veil of clouds, there was always a round “window” above our place of prayer through which the stars could be seen.
One night it rained, but where we were standing it was dry, as if someone had opened an invisible umbrella over us. One of us stuck a hand beyond the boundary of this invisible umbrella, and it immediately became wet from the rain.
We continued to pray, although nothing extraordinary was happening in our church or city.
Some people from the church were angry with us and criticized us. They said it was foolish to feed mosquitoes in a field when we could gather for prayer at home. Nevertheless, we continued our night vigils, and people from our church and other churches began joining us.
Fire from Heaven
1998
One day in January 1998, we returned from a worship festival where we had performed as participants. It was already late, and because we were tired, we decided not to go to the field but to hold a night prayer meeting in the club building where our church met at that time.
That evening, I received a word from God that He would send us fire, and we prayed very fervently, hungering for the fire of the Holy Spirit and the glory of God. Then, in the middle of the night, the night attendant ran into the hall and shouted, “Fire is falling from heaven!” Our reaction was, “Thank You, Lord, for the fire from heaven!” We began shouting, dancing, and singing a joyful song. The attendant, bewildered, ran out of the hall into the street, while we burst out laughing! Then another sister ran in and shouted, “It’s true, fire is flying down from heaven!”
We ran outside and saw that fire really was falling from heaven because the club’s roof was on fire. We called the firefighters, but because of delays with the water and electricity, they were putting out the ruins. The large club building burned down right before our eyes.
The possible cause of the fire became clear later. The day before the incident, a folk healer had held healing sessions at the club, filling the hall with people (500 people). The healer wanted to buy the club, but the authorities refused because our church met there. He then declared that if the club did not belong to him, it would not belong to us either.
Perhaps he was behind the fire, or perhaps it was simply a coincidence. God knows.
Challenges to Our Faith
1999
Throughout 1999, the church gathered outdoors, on the steps of a burned-out club.
During that difficult period for the church, I led the worship team. We sang in both rain and snow. I remember how, in the freezing cold, our fingers froze to the strings and microphones. I remember how we swept snow off the keyboards and poured water out of the instruments. The “street” church provoked different reactions from the residents of our town. Some passersby twisted a finger at their temples in disbelief; others threatened us or showered us with profanity. But there were also those who listened and received a blessing.
By that time, my wife Inna had already received the Lord. These events pushed me even more to seek something greater.
The Internet had just appeared in Ukraine, and I began searching there for every piece of information that had anything to do with revival. But there was very little material like that at the time. Nevertheless, we learned that revival fire was burning in Toronto. How we longed to get there! However, to travel to Canada in those days, we would have had to sell our apartment or car.
All we could do was pray: “Lord, we don’t have the money for the trip, so send people from the Toronto Revival to us, to our little town…” After prayers like that, we laughed at ourselves: “What? From Toronto to some Krasnoarmiisk? Right… Could something like that really happen?”
2000
On January 1, 2000, while people on earth were expecting the end of the world because of software failures during the changeover to the new year, the Lord spoke to my heart: “Begin raising up and teaching the young people. I have a plan for them. I will pour out My Spirit on them and move through them.”
Having received this word, I gathered the young people—there were only five of them left in the church at the time! I told them about the Lord’s plans, and together we agreed to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and revival in our church. Thus our youth ministry began.
“Receive the Fire” Conference
Two months later, on April 10–14, an invitation came into our hands to the “Receive the Fire” conference, featuring ministers from the Toronto Revival. It was to be held at the Father’s House Church in Kharkiv. Our church pastor tried to dissuade us from going, but Inna and I, another pastor, and the two most spiritually hungry young people from our group went anyway, understanding that this was God’s answer for us.
We enjoyed the conference, although much of it was quite strange. People in the hall were trembling, shouting, jerking, and laughing, while we stood rooted to the spot, watching this “outrage” in shock. Although I considered myself charismatic, seeing what was happening made me feel like a “Baptist.”
Since I had previously experienced the Holy Spirit coming upon me powerfully and had tasted the glory of God, I prayed that God would confirm to me that this spiritual fire and river came from the Holy Spirit and were not a counterfeit.
The next day, Trevor Baker preached about the river of the Holy Spirit flowing from the throne of God. Then he invited all the pastors who thirsted to enter this river to come up on stage. He said, “I sense that a river is flowing here on the stage. Come here and step into its waters.”
God’s River
My wife and I headed toward the stage. The first thing I physically smelled was the odor of electricity (silicon). (If you have ever been near a working welding machine, you may have noticed the distinctive smell of molten metal. The same smell appears when flint stones are struck together.) Around the place we approached, I began to feel lightning discharges, which, as I realized, were producing this smell. I was swaying from side to side. With difficulty, I made it onto the stage.
The pastors who went before me took several steps across the stage; then their legs became tangled, and they fell, shaking and laughing. The stage was covered with people.
As I stepped forward, I physically felt my foot sink into a thick, honey-like sludge. I tried to take the next step but could not. The River of the Spirit was so thick that I could not move from the spot. Trying to lift my other foot, I lost my balance and fell into this river.
Instantly filled with the Holy Spirit, I somehow began to laugh. At that moment, I forgot that cameras were recording me and that I was a balanced, serious person. I simply felt good, and for the first time in my life I experienced how deeply my Heavenly Father loves me. It was then that I received revelation about the Father’s heart and that I am His son.
When we returned home from the conference, we decided to pray “in a new way,” as the conference speakers had done, crying out, “More, Lord! More!” Since I led the youth ministry, naturally, we decided to pray for our young people. (There were already about fifty of them by then.) Suddenly, the young people began falling, shaking, and laughing.
Revival ERUPTED!
Believers from other churches began coming to our church to see the miracles. Unbelievers also began repenting, even though we did nothing to bring this about. The youth ministry immediately grew to 90 people! Since I led praise, our repertoire quickly changed. We sang many songs such as “More, More,” “Quench My Thirst with Living Water,” “Come and Fill,” “Drink, Children, the Holy Wine,” “Dive into the River,” and so on. The church became a very joyful place, but…
Not everyone liked this unusual move of the Spirit, and the church leaders began to resist what they called “strange fire.” A difficult time began for us.
Three months after the outpouring began, the youth and I went to summer camp. When we returned to the church, we discovered that it was already “empty,” without the manifested presence of the Spirit. As I began searching for the reason, I received the answer in prayer: “The Holy Spirit has been quenched.”
Everything in the church returned to normal: unbelievers stopped repenting, the youth dispersed, and neither we nor the “river” were accepted; instead, we were criticized.
We were desperate, but we continued holding night prayers in a small circle, being filled and soaking so that we would not lose the river within us.
Meeting Dan Slade
2001
We continued praying for the river to keep flowing, and three months later (in January 2001), Dan Slade, the Canadian who had been a speaker at the “Receive the Fire” conference in Kharkiv, “happened” to come to our area. We met Dan, and this became the beginning of our journey together in the “river.” The Lord said to me then, “I will bless you through him, and I will bless him through you.”
Six months later (in July 2001), I had the opportunity to attend the first “Receive the Fire” ministry school in Ukraine. Before leaving, after the youth service, my friends and I sat and cried. Tears also rolled down my cheeks (I very rarely cry), because I felt that I would not return to our church. I did not yet know what lay ahead, but that evening I felt myself becoming detached from the church, like one segment of an orange separating from another. With my whole being, I sensed that at the school the Lord would reveal His plans for my life, and that these plans would not be connected with the church where I had served until then. And so it happened.
The First “Receive the Fire” School
The prophet and his assistants who taught at the school prophesied over me, confirming everything that was in my heart.
Through the prophet, the Lord revealed my calling to me. In particular, he said: “The Lord has called you to start a church, raise up leaders, and carry the Good News to the ends of the earth… You will have a base (center), and you will minister not only in your city, but will carry God's message and God's heart very far.”
The Beginning of a Life of Faith
Inspired by the prophecy, I returned home and immediately resigned from my prestigious television job. I still did not understand how I would provide for my family, but I felt that I was acting according to God's will.
A week later, I received an invitation to the first “Receive the Fire” prophetic school, and I immediately understood that I needed to be there. I took my last (severance) payment and went to study. During the classes, a minister from Canada who knew nothing about me (he did not know that I had quit my job and had no way to provide for my family) approached me and said:
“God told me to finance your family for two years so that you could serve the Lord.”
I could not believe it! This was the first financial miracle in my life and my first experience of walking by faith.
Seeking the Face of the Lord
Upon returning from the prophetic school (in October 2001), my wife Inna, my daughter Yulia, and I began seeking the face of the Lord daily for an hour or two. Later, other spiritually hungry people joined us. For a year and a half, we gathered every evening to worship, soak, and intercede. The glory of God manifested at these meetings in the form of gold dust, oil, and other miracles.
I remember small feathers flying around the room, appearing from nowhere. Upon closer examination, they turned out to have the structure of bird feathers, only 1–2 millimeters in size. Then, just as they had appeared, the feathers dissolved.
I will never forget how the Holy Spirit told us to open a particular passage of Scripture and, when we did, we discovered that the verses the Lord had spoken about were covered with gold and sapphire dust. We tried to scrape off the dust, but it would not come off—it seemed that the particles had been pressed into the paper.
So many miracles took place during that period that it was impossible to document them all.
2002
In August 2002, the Lord prompted me to leave the church where I had grown up and begin a separate ministry. We heard many prophecies from different people and pastors. Everyone around us confirmed that I needed to start a church. But inwardly I struggled because I did not want to lose the valuable musical instruments and worship team we had spent so long building in our church.
Then, quite “by chance,” Dan Slade came to our home with a friend and told me that God had sent them to me to say: “The Lord is calling you to become a pastor.” After resisting a little, I accepted this calling because I considered myself Dan’s disciple and trusted his spirituality and maturity.
Release into pastoral ministry
Dan Slade declared me a pastor among the people who gathered with us in the evenings for prayer and prayed for me. I accepted this, but I still had no intention of opening a church, not wanting to disturb our peaceful little “river community” or create problems for myself.
Transition into a New Ministry
But six months later… on Sunday, January 20, 2002 (exactly eight years after my baptism), I was awakened by God at three o’clock in the morning. Sleep literally fled from me. I felt a strong desire to visit my parents (they lived 35 km from our city).
I became seriously alarmed, thinking that something had happened to my mother. Before the sun had risen, I was already standing by their yard. Seeing them, I calmed down. I stood there thinking, “Why did I come here on this Sunday morning when I have a church service?” And, without expecting it myself, I suddenly said to my parents: “I came so that you would bless me. My family and I are going to begin a new ministry. The Lord is calling us to it.”
For the first time in my life, I asked them for their blessing. My parents gladly blessed me, and, happy, I went home, greatly surprising my wife and daughter first, and then the pastor and the church, with the “morning news.” No one expected such a turn of events.
Now no one could have convinced me to cancel this decision, because it was the work of God. Everything was happening according to His plan.
On Sunday, January 20, 2002, the pastor and the church blessed our family and released us into a separate ministry. Thus, in Krasnoarmiisk (now Pokrovsk), Father’s Blessing ministry was born.
The Story Behind the Name “Father’s Blessing”
The revival at Toronto Airport Church was also called the “Toronto Blessing” and the “Father’s Blessing.”
Millions of people attended revival meetings in Toronto, and most importantly, what they received there was a revelation of God’s Father’s heart.
This revelation changed millions of lives and restored many churches. This revelation transformed me and my family, becoming our spiritual DNA for life. Since I had been prophesied to be a carrier of this message, we decided to name our ministry “Father’s Blessing.”
I asked God for understanding about whether I should open a church or simply be an itinerant preacher who would carry the fire of the Holy Spirit and the Father’s love further.
2002
Three months later (March 3, 2002), after our Father’s Blessing ministry was founded, Trevor Baker came to a neighboring city. He was the minister who preached about the reality of the river at the “Receive the Fire” conference in Kharkiv and invited us to enter it.
When I came to the service in Dimitrov, I sat in the middle of the hall. Without knowing me, Trevor pointed at me and began to prophesy: “Lord, give him authority and confidence regarding the church You are organizing through him, so that this church may influence the entire city.”
This gave me confidence that the Lord was calling us to open a church. We continued seeking the face of the Lord at home for another year and asked Him to equip us with everything necessary to establish a church. During that time, we repeatedly received a word from the Lord about our future. Here are some entries from my journal: “Thousands of people from Ukraine and other countries will receive blessing through this ministry. You will travel to the ends of the earth. What you do will later be repeated and applied by many in other places. Through you, I will give others something new.”
The Opening of Father’s Blessing Church
2003
Exactly one year later (03.03.2003), following Trevor’s prophecy, the Krasnoarmeysk Father’s Blessing Church opened and held its first service.
The service took place in a small hall; there were about 20 of us at the time. Interestingly, I was not at this service because I had tonsillitis and was at home with a high fever.
On the one hand, I was upset that I missed the church opening, but on the other hand, I was glad that our church had a different format and that people gathered not around the pastor and his sermon, but around the presence of the Lord.
The Father’s Blessing Website Goes Live
Immediately after the church opened, the Lord prompted me to create the imbf.org Father’s Blessing website. At night, I sat at the computer learning a new profession, and exactly three months later, on 03.05.2003, the Father’s Blessing website went live. At first, it was a single page visited by three people a day. But very soon, the website became popular.
Understanding the Style of My Ministry
Six months later, the Lord miraculously blessed me with finances and a trip to the Toronto Airport revival church, where He gave me three clear dreams that revealed additional details about the style of my ministry.
In the first dream, I saw myself in a medical office wearing a white coat. Many people with various illnesses were brought to me, and I treated them with natural remedies.
In the second dream, I prayed for a boy about 12 years old who was sitting in a wheelchair. The boy was healed, then walked and began telling everyone in the city about this miracle, and the people glorified God.
I received two clear directions. My ministry would primarily focus on helping sick people. God equipped and anointed me to help people through both natural and supernatural means. This ministry would be accompanied by powerful and unusual miracles.
After that, our family adopted a healthy lifestyle, and I began studying natural ways to restore and maintain health.
That is how my first book on health and longevity came about: “How to Live 120 Years Healthy and Beautiful.”
From that time on, I also began actively studying materials on healing and casting out demons.
And so, 10 years of my ministry passed.
Blessings, Dmitriy Leo.
