My name is Byron Maltimore, I'm married with three daughters.

April 2002: I started to have concerns about my Christian beliefs, I began noticing that the Pastors messages were basically the same, "this" represents sin/Hell and "this" represents salvation/Heaven. I was attending a Pentecostal church, faithfully, since Nov. 93.

Nov. 93 - April 02: Were focused mainly on:

Companionship

Seeking a girlfriend, finally finding one and making her my wife, the struggles of the first years of marriage.

Job

For ten years my job experience prior to Nov. 93 was being an engineer onboard a Navy warship and then on an assortment of civilian ships. Finding a land based job was challenging/frustrating.

Children

May 2000: As the stay at home dad my thoughts, time and attention were on them.

When bottlefeedings and diaper changings were finished for our last child things began to slow down for me, this is when I started to have concerns about what I was learning at church. I wanted to know, for sure, that what I was learning was the truth because my kids would be learning this doctrine soon.

June 2002: The start of what I call, "My transition". It was a Wed. evening service and the associate Pastor began preaching what I began calling the, "22=4" type of message meaning that it is basic Christianity that the congregation has heard over and over. I looked around at the congregation thinking that someone new was in the service this evening, when I realized there wasn't I asked myself, "Is this Christianity?" "Are we doing this the right way?"

Over the next few weeks I began praying and asking God for answers, I would always start my prayer, "Father forgive me if this is wrong for asking..." I thought that unity among like-minded churches in our town should be closer in fellowship than what they were, so in late 02 and early 03 I would occasionally mention to the Pastor or associate Pastor about uniting in some way with our fellow Christians.

March 2003: The Pastor read a letter that listed churches who were taking turns having service, i.e. "We will go to your church this Sunday and you come to our church next Sunday." These churches were encouraging our church to join. I thought that this was great! I waited for our church to make the decision to join in this uniting of churches, but it never happened.

June 2003: I wasn't sure what to do, I had stopped mentioning anything about joining this group of churches to the Pastor and associate Pastor, I was still praying about what to do though.

One morning when I was getting the girls dressed, I checked the tag on their t-shirt to make sure I was putting it on the right way and on the tag in big letters was the word UNITE. I immediately knew what I was being told, I looked at the tag closer and saw that UNITE stood for Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile.

God was telling me to unite with this group of churches, this was difficult to do, my wife had been going to this church for nearly her whole life, we had family and friends here.

The obvious church to go to was the church that had, about 20 years earlier, split from our church, my wife knew and was friends with many.

As the weeks went by at our new church I noticed that the messages were the same, but I knew that this church was unifying with others.

Sept. 21st 2003: An evangelist spoke to us. I immediately knew that this was the food my Spirit needed, at the end of the service I was baptized in the Holy Spirit something that I wanted for nearly ten years.

My story reflects what I learned from the evangelist then and what I have learned from God since.