Iliya was raised in a non-Christian home. However, during his teenage years his grandmother spoke about God to him. He never listened to her words and lived in disobedience. When he was six his mother left him and his father. For the next nine years he lived only with his father. When he was fifteen his father died of cancer. He had to take care of him for the last year of his life. Life was difficult, but God was gracious to Iliya, even though he did not know Him yet. At the age of seventeen, after a wasteful day, he passed by an Evangelical church. The following day he attended the worship service there and joined the church. Years went by and his pastor at that time asked him to go and study in a Bible college in England. So in August 2010 he went to study theology at the International Bible Training Institute in West Sussex. After his first year he came under conviction and came to true faith in Christ through reading Romans chapter 3. His life was changed from that day onwards.

After declining an invitation to become an associate pastor of a church in Norfolk, Iliya returned to Bulgaria, and for the next three years served in his home church that sent him to the Bible college in England. However, as a result of his reformed beliefs, he began to see the need for a new church. Then with a group of people they decided to begin gathering for a Bible study every Saturday. Slowly but surely, they moved their meetings to Sundays and began having worship services at home. In 2016 he met with a committee of three pastors from the Union of Evangelical Congregational Churches in Bulgaria (a Presbyterian denomination!) and in 2017, after marrying Christina, they embarked on the mission to plant a reformed Bible believing church in Ruse. Iliya's hope and desire for the future is to see the church plant growing and the conversion of new people to Christ.

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