Pas­tor Win­ston Cuffie, re­cip­i­ent of a Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) in this year's In­de­pen­dence Day awards, be­gan his min­istry 28 years ago, and al­most im­me­di­ate­ly be­came a house­hold name.On June 26, 1983, a youth­ful, new­ly mar­ried Pas­tor Cuffie and his wife An­gela opened their first church in a small 20 square feet wood­en struc­ture on the Main Road, Chase Vil­lage, Cen­tral Trinidad. It was a Pen­te­costal place of wor­ship and min­istry to the needy and they called it Mir­a­cle Min­istries.The em­pha­sis of the church was on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of young men and women caught up in drugs, crime and oth­er so­cial­ly-de­fec­tive con­di­tions. The young pas­tor and his bride reached out with a min­istry fo­cused on strength­en­ing fam­i­ly life and Bible-based de­liv­er­ance from phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al chal­lenges.Soon Mir­a­cle Min­istries was get­ting at­ten­tion from the me­dia with sto­ries of the many young men who had been con­vert­ed and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed (or re­cov­er­ing) from a life of nar­cotics or oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. There were al­so sev­er­al re­ports of mirac­u­lous heal­ings and fam­i­ly restora­tion. The crowds flood­ed Mir­a­cle Min­istries and the church ex­pand­ed at a rapid rate.In just over a year, the church pur­chased an acre of prime lands on the Main Road in Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas and a much larg­er fa­cil­i­ty was built.

This, ac­cord­ing to Pas­tor Cuffie, was "to op­er­ate a mul­ti-faceted, holis­tic Min­istry which would be much bet­ter equipped to ad­dress the needs of the peo­ple be­ing as­sist­ed."Eigh­teen months af­ter it was found­ed, Mir­a­cle Min­istries had its own pre-school, youth and adult lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes, so­cial/char­i­ty op­er­a­tions, free med­ical as­sis­tance from trained pro­fes­sion­als, a small agri­cul­ture project, and schol­ar­ships were be­ing of­fered to young men in var­i­ous craft and aca­d­e­m­ic skills.A few months lat­er, a vi­brant mu­sic train­ing pro­gramme be­gan at the church, with well-known in­struc­tor, Cyril Ramdeo. This broad­ened to steel­pan groups, dance, dra­ma and po­et­ry.The pop­u­lar 4M BAND, with lo­cal gospel hits such as Ad­dict­ed and Gimme Je­sus, evolved from this ini­tia­tive. Many mem­bers of the band had been trans­formed from an­ti-so­cial or ne­far­i­ous lifestyles.Roger Is­rael and Amar Stu­dios were hired by Pas­tor Cuffie to do three al­bums. All 27 songs were writ­ten by Pas­tor Cuffie.To­day the fruits of Mir­a­cle Min­istries' mu­sic min­istry have grown to the point of per­for­mances at Hol­ly­wood, Madi­son Square Gar­den and Times Square, New York; Six Flags, and record­ings at Sony and Avatar Stu­dios, in the Unit­ed States.By late 1985, Mir­a­cle Min­istries was "a force to be reck­oned with." Pas­tor Cuffie's "rev­o­lu­tion­ary" style dra­mat­i­cal­ly crossed the bound­aries of "Pen­te­costal sta­tus quo." He be­gan us­ing the print and elec­tron­ic me­dia to point­ed­ly ad­dress so­cial and po­lit­i­cal is­sues which he saw as "prac­ti­cal Chris­t­ian re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to so­ci­ety." This, as was ex­pect­ed, caused a con­sid­er­able stir through­out the na­tion, with mixed re­ac­tions.

In his typ­i­cal bold, fo­cused style, Pas­tor Cuffie con­tin­ued to sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand the pro­grammes, scope, promi­nence and in­flu­ence of Mir­a­cle Min­istries na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. His ef­fec­tive­ness was no­tably aug­ment­ed as he formed part­ner­ships and al­liances with var­i­ous NGOs, in­di­vid­u­als, and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies.To vary­ing de­grees, Mir­a­cle Min­istries has worked with YTEPP, SHARE, Skills Train­ing De­vel­op­ment Agency, OJT, EC­CE, COSTAATT and NED­CO; the Cou­va, Tal­paro/Tabaquite Cor­po­ra­tion, the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ments, Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Min­istry of Health, Na­tion­al Aids Co­or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC), En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, Red Cross As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, The Scouts As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, WASA and the Voice of One Over­com­ers Club. Mir­a­cle Min­istries has al­so op­er­at­ed a le­gal con­sul­tan­cy ser­vice and med­ical clin­ic.Many of Cuffie's peers con­tin­ue to de­scribe his ac­com­plish­ments and "lead­er­ship acu­men" as "as­tound­ing"."This is par­tic­u­lar­ly so from the stand­point that nei­ther he nor his Min­istry has had the ben­e­fit of sup­port from a de­nom­i­na­tion or any for­eign aid, but built this huge Or­gan­i­sa­tion from scratch in such a rel­a­tive­ly short time."The ex­tra­or­di­nary achieve­ments re­flect sheer hard work and ex­em­plary self­less and de­vot­ed, long-term ser­vice, by the re­mark­able grace of the Lord," said med­ical doc­tor Bish­op Dr David Ibeleme of Vic­to­ri­ous Faith Min­istries, with head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain.

He de­scribes Pas­tor Cuffie, as "an un­usu­al­ly bril­liant leader who is a spe­cial gift to Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Body of Christ... His Cha­co­nia Gold is most cer­tain­ly well-de­served".Se­nior Pas­tor Bernard Joseph of Christ for the Na­tions, USA said: "I have known Rev Dr Win­ston Cuffie for the past 20 years. He has an amaz­ing mind. His cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive ca­pac­i­ty is in­cred­i­ble. His depth of love for peo­ple tru­ly re­flects God."Pun­dit Dave Ram­per­sad of the Mc Bean Hin­du Tem­ple was high in praise of Cuffie's com­mu­ni­ty work, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal High School."Pas­tor Cuffie is do­ing a tremen­dous work in the com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly with this school. It's a light to the com­mu­ni­ty. You see the ex­cel­lent re­sults and the dis­ci­pline in­cul­cat­ed in the stu­dents." For­mer Cou­va/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Mulchan Lewis re­marked: "Dr Cuffie is an as­set any com­mu­ni­ty will love to have. His part­ner­ship with the Cor­po­ra­tion has al­ways been high­ly val­ued and cher­ished."To­day the or­gan­i­sa­tion is known as Mir­a­cle Min­istries In­ter­na­tion­al and Rev Dr Win­ston Cuffie is CEO and Gen­er­al Over­seer. The or­gan­i­sa­tion in­cludes the Mir­a­cle Min­istries Com­plex in Ch­agua­nas with the 2,400-seat Christ Cas­tle (an ar­chi­tec­tur­al mas­ter­piece de­signed en­tire­ly by Pas­tor Cuffie) with a con­gre­ga­tion of 5,000.There is al­so an Ear­ly Child­hood Cen­tre, In­sti­tute of Min­istry and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion; Ed­u­ca­tion and Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre; a 550-stu­dent sev­en-year, Gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed Sec­ondary School; Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, Coun­sel­ing and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices; Dis­ci­ple­ship and Men­tor­ing Op­er­a­tion, Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion, Mis­sion­ary Out­reach and a Me­dia Cen­tre.Pas­tor Cuffie has al­so worked in col­lab­o­ra­tion with vir­tu­al­ly every re­li­gious body in T&T, on var­i­ous ini­tia­tives.