After returning to the commune in San Anselmo the party was over for me for partying every evening virtually and Roseanne had moved on and so had Linda and it was just Becky and my best friend Robert and his girlfriend Lorraine and no certain terms I told Robert and Lorraine that the partying was over for me but my friend wanted to keep partying and keep drinking wine and smoking pot and not helping to pay the rent for I Becky and I were the only rent payers and having a part-time jobs and things came to a head one morning when I told them that they were going to have to leave for the party was over and I'm moving on to serve the Lord and Becky still couldn't understand what happened to me first she told me later I had completely changed nothing like she didn't even know me anymore the way I used to think and be and when I told my friend Bob that he had to leave he said to finally know and I flipped out and kicked over the proverbial coffee pot in the living room and I threw my breakfast plate at you and it missed him and thankfully it didn't break the floor to ceiling photos of the living room facing the Redwood Grove the house wrapped around in an owl shade and the kitchen was windowed and the bedrooms had picture windows in them and I lunch at him to physically throw him out of the house if I had to but I was desperate not to go back to my old way of life and I felt like I was fighting for my life against a way of life that I didn't want to live anymore and I needed a break to be healed and to be made home and to eat healthy and the quit partying and the quit drinking and the quit smoking pot and everything else that was going with my past hippie lifestyle. We fought and swung at each other and neither of us was able to hit each other or connect and Lorraine was standing by with a hammer ready to clobber me if I started hurting her boyfriend and they got the message that it's time for them to to leave for not paying rent and wanting to continue to live like partying hippies. Then Bob and Lorraine went into their bedroom and started packing and wrote on the wall that we hate you Peter and as they were leaving my old girlfriend Sally showed up at the same time and as they were all going out the door Sally who had broken my heart a year earlier and my first love and the first one to ever do it said to me with her beautiful face that I still remembered and said to me Peter you haven't got a friend left in the world and I looked at her and I said Sally you are as beautiful as a rose torns and all and as they all filed out the door and as I closed the front door and locked, it for the first time since I joined the commune I took a breath and with Becky standing by my side still, I realized that we had this beautiful and brand new luxurious Hillside home, for ourselves and even though it was poorly furnished, it was home and we were alone and I said to myself that I have brothers and sisters, all over the World, in Jesus Christ and that was the first great gift I recieved,since being born again and I settle in to a regiment of Bible study and prayer and going to meetings and jumping up and down on the couch, metaphorically speaking trying to get Becky to understand what happened to me and the new birth is real and Jesus is real and God is real and of course the Holy Spirit doesn't come into my heart in Jesus name and sent by the father and she patiently accepted me the new way I was. I went to a local barber shop to get a haircut and the barber gave me a Hitler style haircut with long on top and kind of shaved looking on the side like my dad used to wear his hair and this guy knew nothing about hair styling and after looking in a mirror, at home I took a razor and cut off all my hair and started wearing a knit cap and I look like I had just joined the Hare Krishna cult. One day in the First Baptist church in Sausalito there was a guest speaker from the Marine City Church of God named Pastor Fred small and he was talking about getting the churches together and having an interracial tent meeting in the parking lot of our nearest shopping Center in Corte Madera of which was close by and I was so impressed by this amazing man and preacher that after the Baptist service which would last like 90 minutes and start at 11:00 I would go over to the Marine City Church of God next door in the predominantly black community, for their services lasted longer and I was able to catch the half end of their services and I was so blessed and delighted to hear the music and the clapping and the drums and the piano and the organ and the choir and whoever else was playing any instrument there and dancing and jumping up and down and leaving and praising the Lord and especially on mid-week services on Wednesday of which all of the Bible churches had in those days and healings and miracles and prayers and speaking and praying in tongues and this was not even a Pentecostal Church and it was charismatic and I remember somebody being delivered from a demon of adultery after laying on the ground and rising in agony and wrestling without adulterous devil and when it came out he was delivered he was calm and people would fall over when prayed for and it was just a beautiful whole healthy and a healing experience both physically mentally and spiritually speaking. Then I heard of another church and Assembly of God Church in San Rafael of which was Pentecostal and there was this delightful middle-aged pastor and he gave his testimony that he couldn't read or write when he was called into the ministry working in a field down south and that part of America, the Bible Belt for instance. This man had no formal education to the best of my knowledge in theology and had learned to read and write after being called of God to be a preacher and he may have gone to some Bible School and Seminary I doubt it and even going to a Bible School I doubt it for I had the impression that after he is calling he just began preaching the Bible from memory and from hearsay and eventually learn to read it for himself like I did for I was a very poor reader and a very poor student in school for my mind was always wandering and daydreaming and wishing I was not in class and after my new birth, I could pick up the Bible and read it and understand it and devoured it, like the first book that I have ever read for I could count the books I've ever read up to that point on both my hands if I recall for I was raised on television and who had time or needed to read when you had television and that's the way it was. I begin going to the Baptist Church midweek meetings also and the Church of God midweek meetings and the Assembly of God midweek meetings and any other Bible study or prayer meeting that I could find, also somewhere along the line I met a man named Richard Bohr for he had come up from Los Angeles with his new wife and started a coffee house and the fellowship hall of the Assembly of God Church in Mill Valley and called it the Crown of Life Coffee House and Becky and I would go there every Friday and fellowship and witness to the youth that would play or gather in front of the coffee house. One evening Richard's wife was singing he's real he's real I know he's real and while she was singing that classic gospel hymn and I was praying in the side room with someone, all of a sudden I heard Becky cry out he's real or it's real and I was shocked and surprised for Becky is a very undemonstrable person and for her to cry out loud and having a supernatural experience and the new birth, was an answer to my prayer for I told her that I could not marry her unless she was born again and we had moved to separate bedrooms in the house and now I knew I was living with a fellow born again Christian. Meanwhile I was picking up all the hitchhikers that I could and share Jesus with them and one day I picked up a hitchhiker named Bob and he had just recently been born again and lo and behold he became my first Christian friend other than Becky for the Baptist Church that I went to didn't have any youth to speak of and only a couple of young men that were Sons of a man named Lars, who was an elder in the church and a very happy and friendly and gentleman and wise looking with his beard and I had nobody from my background that I could relate to until I met Bob. Together we would Minister and fellowship at the Crown of Life Coffee House and sky was the limit and we felt there was nothing we couldn't do in the name of the Lord and we were young and full of energy and Bob eventually went on to be the head of a Christian house in Novato of which developed into a church called Church the open door and then became pastor of another church of the Open Door in San Francisco and then started a church in Phoenix Arizona called the streams of Living Water Church and I settled into a routine of reading the Bible and studying and praying something like 4 to 6 hours a day to prepare myself for the ministry for our Hillside home had become a monastery to me and I would go to Bible studies and prayer meetings and what we called witnessing nights where we would go out in the streets and Witness to people and pass out tracks and flyers and virtually every day or every night was busy going from one Bible study and prayer meeting and midweek service to another and I was saturating myself with the things of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and the Saints. Then I remember going to my brother's apartment in San Rafael to share with him my new birth experience and we argued and we fussed and we fought and my brother braunik or Nick as later he was called would say something like that God was a Great Dictator in the sky for he was a student at Berkeley and he loved to drink also of which I avoided in my early teens because of my father's alcoholism and stuck mainly to whatever drugs I can get my hands on to and marijuana and of course drink also but it was never really my main cup of tea for I did not want to end up being like my father, hard-working as he was but drinking all the time after work and he was a mean drunk and not a happy drunk and would be belittling and that's another story and so my brother had always fancy bottles of booze in the kitchen and I challenged him to make a decision right then and there, do you want to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior and he stopped his belligerent and arguing when I put them on the spot and he prayed to accept the Lord Jesus Christ and was born again and saved and sue his wife prayed with him. Meanwhile I met a man name Larry Smith at the Assembly of God church in San Rafael and I believe I gave my testimony as I always like to say something during a church service and most anybody can have something to share during a Baptist or Pentecostal service and Larry was impressed and we immediately bonded and when I went to my apartment I brought Larry with me and he looked like a stone biker and used to have a motorcycle club in Phoenix called the Bulldogs and he looked like a bulldog and he looked like Steve Reeves also and for he used to work out with him and even played in a child's program in Phoenix called Low dad's monster and was dismissed after children started emulating him pulling phones out of walls and things and he had a good friend who was Hank Williams cousin called Jerry Williams, who gave me my first electric guitar a fender music master. My brother was so impressed by Larry that they became the best of friends in life and Larry really liked my older brother and they were hard-headed and strong-minded together and my brother was radicalized in Berkeley from where he graduated and now that he has become a born again Christian he was 100% for the Lord and we all joined a general Baptist congregation in San Rafael which met in in the Carpenters Hall and we used to pray and what we called the upper room upstairs is it the auditorium would be filled with people and it never was while we had our services there and but I told a leader of the Jesus movement named Kent about the place and when the pastor named Jack Khulmen, who went on back to his original home Church in a town named Ceres, close to Modesto California and Kent rented the auditorium and the place was filled and just like we prayed and but not exactly if you know what I mean for our ways are not God's ways and he had a bigger plan and it wasn't for us to fill the auditorium but for Kent to do it and yet still an answer to prayer and so my brother are wives and Larry Smith and another started having church services in our house in San Anselmo and then we eventually rented the wood acre Improvement Club in the town of woodacre California Marin County and there we begin having formal church and worship services for we had no place to Fellowship that we could relate to for we were all newly saved and most churches were still conservatively structured and had no place to send people that the street people that we would go out and witness and minister to and who would accept the Lord and what better place to send these brand new believers, then to a brand new Jesus movement Church. One morning I woke up on a Sunday and I felt it the meeting Hall that we rented wasn't worth the money we were spending for the amount of people that were coming for it started off with a bang of about 16 to 18 people and then dwindled down to just a handful of us after the initial excitement and Novelty of it all and we went on for a period with very low and sparse attendance and I called my brother that morning and said let's cancel the service for it was only down to my brother and I are wives and Larry Smith and one other regular and I told my brother that let's quit running the recreation center and find some other place to meet for it just was not working out for us and after I drop the phone. The Lord got a hold of my heart and said call your brother back and tell him that we are not canceling our Sunday service is there and for I felt the Lord strongly putting it on my heart to go out there and have the service and when we got there there were all these children playing in a front of the auditorium and I said to myself wow, I asked them all to come in to the church service and the number of them did and from that Sunday on the church began to grow and it took about a year and the church attendance grew up to 30 to 40 people coming and going on Sundays and that's when I learned that it takes a solid year for a congregation to develop and I remember in the scriptures that when Jesus fed the multitudes he had them sit in groups of 40 to be fed and 40 is about the maximum One Pastor can minister to and I believe this is the example that Jesus was setting that the perfect congregation is around 30 to 40 people for one pastor and when a church grows to 80 people then a second full-time pastor should be hired or volunteer and it was no Cakewalk to found a congregation and it took much prayer and determination and after the initial year it seemed, then the congregation began to grow and riches maximum attendance. If this was Los Angeles with millions of people that church would have kept doubling and tripling and so far and but Marin County has only around 250,000 people and a Congregation of 30 and 40 is about good and average and when I was in Jerusalem I noticed the same thing that good size congregation was around 30 or 40 people for instance or for example and the feeling of Jerusalem was very much like the feeling of for instance Sausalito, a Crossroads of the world and tourist and Pilgrim destination. The General Baptist Church called Harmony Baptist that we finally settled into with Pastor Jack Khulmen, before he moved on back to the church that he was born again in and became Pastor there in Ceres California of witches pastor's dream and before that he recommended me to become a licensed preacher in the General Baptist denomination of America of which is also referred to as the northern Baptist Church juxtaposed to the Southern Baptist Church and the General Baptist Church were known as followers of the teachings of James Arminus and the Southern Baptist Church followed the teachings of John Calvin or were Calvinistic and Calvinism is taught that once someone is born again that they cannot lose their salvation, of which is a given for no one can "lose their salvation" and one can only walk away from it for I Believe In My Heart that God never takes away one's freedom of choice to follow him even after they are born again, otherwise we would be reduced again to robots and automatons and the extreme opposite end of this theology is when people backslide that they have to get saved again and that's another theological and hair splitting piece of metaphoric theology and the other extreme version of Calvinism is is that one cannot lose their salvation and it is generally accepted among Bible theologians, is that the only way one can quote lose their salvation, is through apostasy and apostasy is losing one's love for God and one must be careful to always cherish and be grateful for what God has done by the ministry and unction of the Holy through Jesus Christs substitutionary death for our sins and so back to my calling into the formal Ministry of Jesus Christ, my pastor recommended that I be licensed for a year. And after a year ordained and he took me to the central district meeting in California of the General Baptist Church, where the pastors all meet and spend the whole day preaching to each other every quarter and so that they might be fed and then take the preaching and teachings that they have learned back to their congregations if anybody wonders how do ministers get ministered to and I went before the elders of which all met in a church building and they asked me one question for my pastor had already informed them of my qualifications and testimony and the one question that they asked me was how do I know that I had a calling of God on me for the other pastors for instance would tell of Glory stories of how they were called of God into the ministry and all I told them was that when Jesus came into my heart that I had a burning and unquenchable desire to share Jesus Christ with others and they asked me no other question in my interview and they all lined up in a row and one by one gave me the right hand to Fellowship and every one of them told me and said only one thing, preach the word and finally the last pastor who shook my hand said that if he caught me speaking or talking or teaching in tongues that he would have my collar and then they let me preach and but most of the preachers and pastors had already left and there were a few to hear am I christening sermon and all the well for these were seasoned Brothers and the Lord and had heard enough about me through my pastor and my testimony of my burning and hearts desire to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. Eventually my pastor moved on and I never completed the year internship, for the local congregation had folded and the remaining members to rigid and are too flexible to change to this new phenomena called the Jesus movement and pastor Kent Philpott, the most visible leader of the Jesus Novement at the time went to rent the Carpenters Hall Auditorium on Sundays and it was filled with Jesus people, while our little band rented the woodacre Improvement Club for services and the rest is history...to be continued the next chapter " Full Speed Ahead in the Gospel Ministry"and a work in progress and if you ha e been touched by the Holy Ghost and blessed by this testimony and please feel free to make a contribution for our hot mean and food distribution program in Dunphy Park, every Sunday starting at noon and all day long ministering and being a listening ear and sharing gospel and inspirational music and a place for all day fellowship and peace and spreading of the Word by writing to the New Covenant Evangelistic Association Inc. P.O. Box 2404 San Anselmo California 94979 or one can donate through PayPay 415 374 0734 and request also a tax exempt receipt by mail or through Cash App cone name after one of my late fund raising Doxies $Cajidog and thank you and God Bless!!!
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