“...in my prison cell full of despair, I called on God...”

My name is Neil Harvey and I’m a local boy from Cornelly. Many of you may know me personally and maybe quite surprised to hear about what has happened to me in recent years.

After spending four years studying theology in two different colleges and working two years as a youth leader in Brackla Tabernacle, I was recently ordained as the new Pastor of ‘Cornelly Community Church’ in Greenfield Terrace. (formerly known as Bethel Apostolic Church) I would never have thought that I’d end up being a minister of a church. However, I’ve been on an amazing life journey these last 6 years and I’d like to share something of this journey with you so that hopefully you too can experience something of the wonderful event that has taken place in my life.

One of my memories as a youngster was always having a sense of not knowing who I was or where I fitted in. During my early teenage years I became involved in solvent abuse as a means of trying to escape reality and the confusion I was feeling inside. At the age of fifteen I was thrown out of school for various misdemeanours which only added to the downward spiral of my wayward lifestyle. By the time I turned eighteen I was already injecting hard drugs and leading a life of crime which involved dealing drugs.
I had a number of drug induced breakdowns and nearly died on at least two occasions. This all finally caught up with me when I ended up in Cardiff prison for the crimes I committed. Whilst in prison I had time to reflect on the mess that I had made of my relatively short life. As a child my mum had sent me to the local Sunday School in Greenfield Terrace where I had received a limited understanding of God’s love and His acceptance of people who had messed up. Sadly, during my teenage years and for most of my twenties I had no regard for God and just completely pushed Him out of my life. Now here I was paying the price…...

While I was in my prison cell full of despair, I called on the God I had known as a child and asked him to come and help me sort out the mess that I now found myself in. As I called on God within the confines of my cell, I had this amazing sense of God’s presence and a warm feeling of love and acceptance just filled my whole being. This experience seemed to melt the hardness of my heart and created a deep desire to draw closer to God. An insatiable desire to learn more about God and Jesus led me to read the Bible, where I discovered that God’s mercy and forgiveness of sin is readily available to those who call on His name, just as I had done and which led to my total life changing experience.

Shortly after my release from prison, with my new found faith in God, I made contact with a church in Bridgend called Brackla Tabernacle. It was during this time I felt drawn to study God’s Word purposefully for a full year at a Bible College in Ammanford and then also for a further three years at an International Bible College in Denmark. It was during my third year in Denmark that I met my beautiful wife Karen who has since returned with me to live in Wales. Together we have a desire to reach out to the lonely and despairing people of our community and also to those that have lost their way in life and lack a sense of higher purpose. We want to show them, through God’s living Word, that there is hope and that there is a personal God who answers those who call on His name just as I did 6 years ago.