A Story about "Love thy neighbor"

Hello my name is Jeff, I'm the Music Minister at Crestview Baptist Community Church in Lakeland, Florida. I wanted to tell you about God's work being done right here and now. About a year ago my girlfriend who is now my wife, started going to a church in down town Lakeland called the International Temple of Praise which is a Pentacostal Church. Well she invited me to go with one Thursday night and I said okay let's go! It was a very hot summer night and they didn't have A/C to speak of, they only had 1 little window unit to try to cool an average size store front retail space along Main street in the downtown area. They also had a couple pedistal fans to help circulate the air. Within 10 minutes I was sweating and very uncomfortable so I'll be honest I didn't want to go back. But after about 30 mins. I could see that these people Love the Lord and would put up with the heat to worship God. I really liked Apositle Goines and his preaching and all of the people in his congregation which is all African American. The Keyboard player Carlos is very talented in his musical abilities. Well we were about to get married and I was going to move in with My wife and we were looking for a new church that we both liked close to our house. We started going to Crestview Baptist Community Church and the people there are very nice but the church had gone through a big ordeal that almost killed the church and was on the doorstep of shutting down. After a couple months attending there the woman that was leading the choir announced she was needing to step down because of health issues so I decided to volunteer my services to take over. Well shortly after that our Pastor(Eric) announced he was moving back to Georgia to be close to his father. We went for about 2 months with temporary Pastors and there was one that I really liked by the name of Edward Holton. One of my favorite memories of Pastor Holton is that he said he was blessed. Pastor Holton was an African American and he was a great preacher. Well our sister church on the north side of town was looking after the financial affairs of our church and they had said that it might come to closing our church because of the expenses over taking the offerings. So I prayed to God for a solution to keep our church open and revive it. I had a couple good ideas to do that but then God told me to contact Apositle Goines and see if he was interested in bringing his flock to worship in our building as their own church. Apositle Goines really liked our church's main sanctuary but our sister church only wanted to rent the upstairs which was in a state of repair. I told Apositle Goines the possibilites of the upstairs being he could make it how he wanted to but I could see he wanted to worship in our sanctuary so I told him to go for it. Weeks and maybe a month or two went by and then one friday night I was driving home and saw some cars out in front of the church. I stopped to see what was going on and to my surprise I found Apositle Goines and Pastor Steve (our new pastor from Kentucky) coming out the front door. They had several meetings in the past but this time it was about exchanging keys and showing them where everything was in the building. It had happened! God answered my prayer and Apositle Goines and his church were going to be helping us financially for using our house of the lord to hold their services. This was a big step for them because the store front they were renting had developed from a leak in the roof to actually raining in their church. The landlord was asked to fix it and nothing was getting done! Now my dear friend Apositle Goines and his flock would be able to worship in a place that had no roof leak, and had central air conditioning. They just had their first service Sunday morning and Sunday evening this past weekend 8/24/08. I praise the Lord for answering my prayers! I went to their evening service and Apositle Goines noticed I was sitting way in the back and he pointed me out to his flock and asked them to stand and thank me for bringing them into our house! I was very honored at this and I went up to the stage and gave him a hug and siad "I Love You" and then I proceeded to give him back a huge solid silver or pewter necklace that he had given me almost a year ago when we first met. Then I started to tell his church abut how glad I was that they were there and how much I Love them and how I asked God to help get them out of the place they were worshiping. I told them that one of the ten commandments is to LOVE thy neighbor and that was what GOD had told me when I talked to him about this matter. Then I went down off the stage and gave each one of them a hug and said "I Love You". It was so nice to see them in our church because they had all dressed up in their good church clothes since they werent' going to getting all hot and sweaty. Their music sounded better also and they were so happy to be there it was an awesome site! God had also told me, and it is my mission to break the barriers, that other denominations whether it be Baptist, Luthern, Methodist, etc. should just be refered to as Christians. I think if Christians would unite as Christians then maybe this would be a better world. The more Christians the better! This could be the first time ever a Baptist Church has opened up to let another denomination worship in their building and this would be a very historic event. please feel free to contact me at: Crestview Baptist Community Church Attn: Jeff the Music Minister 815 Central Avenue Lakeland, Florida 33815 If you would like to make a love donation to help support this love effort it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much for reading this message and I hope it touches your heart as it has mine for now I too have been blessed! Love thy neighbor!