TESTIMONIALS

I have had the pleasure of knowing Al and Linda for several years. We met at a Calvary Chapel conference in Northern California and we immediately became great friends. In 2013 we partnered in ministry together when the church they planted, Calvary Chapel Los Banos, merged with Connections Christian Church also located within the city of Los Banos. Al and Linda have a real passion for helping others and caring for people from all walks of life.

Al’s leadership abilities were very evident when seeing what God did through him in the years of planting Calvary Los Banos and all the ministries within the church. He is very gifted at taking someone’s vision and taking real steps to bring it to fruition. He is gifted in raising leaders, teaching the Word of God in solid and applicable ways and counseling others through all kinds of scenarios and situations.

Linda is amazingly gifted at implementing new ministries, especially when it comes to children’s and women’s ministries. Her rich experience with both make her very effective in organizing and launching a number of other ministries as well. Her organizational skills are top notch and her attention to detail is exemplary. She is also great when it comes to coming alongside women to encourage, mentor and counsel.

Together Al & Linda are the perfect team to come alongside individuals, couples, families, pastors, elders and entire congregations to support, encourage, teach and share what God has taught them through their experience over the years. It is an honor to call them friends and to have been able to share in their rich life experience. They have been a true blessing to me and my family both as colleagues and as dear friends.

I met Al while attending a church in the Arizona valley back in 2007. I was seeking mentoring from the local pastor and was asked to contact “that big guy over there” and the rest is history. Al and I formed a friendship that spanned the golf course and extended into the pulpit. Al was instrumental in my early leadership and ministry training. His constant tutelage benefited me when it was my time to preach and teach on various occasions in different churches around the country.

I learned how important it is to properly manage those whom you serve with and those whom you serve under. I had the opportunity to help with a church plant and having seen the things that Al did with his church plant, I was able to help lift the arms of the pastor I served under in order to lessen his load to focus on the ministry.

Al and Linda, as a team, are phenomenal. They have a conjoined heart for true ministry and to help those who are hurting. Witnessing this compassion for others has also helped me in my current ministry at a local prison. I am very proud to call them mentors and more importantly… my friends.

We have known Pastor Al and Linda for several years and they definitely are role models to us. Pastor Al married us five years ago and we went through pre-marital counseling with the two of them and they really helped prepare us for marriage. One thing that really stuck with us was, how they told us to remember to “put God first and one another second.” And once we marry we leave our mothers and fathers and cleave to each other. They shared some of their own experiences with us and prayed with us many times.

They’re two people we have so much respect and love for and will always cherish our time of counseling together and our friendship. With all the distractions in this world around marriage usually in a negative tone, it was uplifting to hear and be shown godly counsel. Most of the questions you hear from the world are truly worldly concerns, but we were shown that marriage is so much more and what that looks like in the sight of the Lord.

We appreciated and loved the time they invested in us, and we were able to see the fruits of their marriage which inspired us even more to seek the Lord first.

On March 31, 2013, Calvary Chapel of Los Banos and Connections Christian Church, after agreeing to merge together as one church, held its first official service. It was a great and happy time to have our first service on Easter morning. To me it was a sign of a new beginning for both churches.

Included in this merger would be three Pastors; myself, Al Abdulla who was the Pastor of Calvary Chapel of Los Banos and Geno Quiroz who was a Pastor in the Bay Area. We came together and agreed to drop our single ministries to form a plurality of pastors – this simply meaning that we would work together as one and become co-pastors to our Senior Pastor, Jesus Christ.

In short it worked, even though Geno lived in the Bay Area. Al and I worked closely together in the Lord even before the merger. Al and I became close friends but it was more than that – we truly became brothers in Christ. The relationship between us helped create the strong bond that is needed in a plurality of Pastors.

We have spoken of it many times. We know it was (and continues to be) of God. We could talk about many things, even have disagreements, but when all was said and done we continued to be friends and brothers in Christ even until this day.

Al soon moved to a different state and Geno still lives in the bay area. We still communicate often via Skype, emails and phone calls. Geno and his wife Vivian, Al and his wife Linda, they are truly my brothers and sisters in Christ. For Life!

I’m thankful to God that He brought us all together.