Evan­gel­i­cal and Open Bible Church­es are reach­ing back in­to com­mu­ni­ties, hold­ing prayer vig­ils and lend­ing aid to vul­ner­a­ble groups in­clud­ing mi­grants.

This was re­vealed by Pas­tor Dr Vic­tor Jo­gie dur­ing the sec­ond na­tion­al day of prayer held at Faith Cen­tre Trinidad in San Fer­nan­do on Eman­ci­pa­tion Day.

The se­ries of na­tion­al prayers are set to take place over the next two years and will end on East­er Mon­day in 2024.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Pas­tor Jo­gie of the End Time Har­vest Min­istries said re­li­gious lead­ers from the Open Bible Stan­dard Church­es, as well as mi­grant re­li­gious lead­ers, are work­ing to­geth­er to help the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in so­ci­ety.

“Our na­tion is in trou­ble and our econ­o­my is in trou­ble. Crime is on the rise. This is the sec­ond na­tion­al day of prayer we are host­ing and we be­lieve peo­ple’s lives will be touched and our coun­try will be a bet­ter coun­try with prayer,” Pas­tor Jo­gie said.

Asked what was be­ing done apart from prayer Pas­tor Jo­gie said: “We have a lot of NGO groups who are work­ing with us.”

He said mi­grant chil­dren were suf­fer­ing as they had no ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion.

“We are reach­ing them and we are plan­ning to teach mi­grants Eng­lish. This is a move­ment that will take us from place to place and we will be go­ing to To­ba­go as well,” Pas­tor Jo­gie said.

He added: “We al­so plan to ap­proach the gov­ern­ment to help with some of our pro­grammes. Our heart is to be our broth­ers’ keep­er.”

“Peo­ple need food, that is the first thing they need. We will pro­vide some ham­pers and we will con­nect and build re­la­tion­ships. We have al­ready dis­trib­uted be­tween 4,000 or 5,000 ham­pers from Va­len­cia, Port-of-Spain and Ch­agua­nas and we will dis­trib­ute ham­pers to­day,” he re­vealed.

Mean­while, Bish­op Ben­jamin Agard, the na­tion­al di­rec­tor of Open Bible Stan­dard Church­es said COVID has caused a lot of hope­less­ness in T&T.

With the many re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tions los­ing touch with their con­gre­ga­tion, Bish­op Agard said: “COVID brought cer­tain re­al­i­ties up­on us and we had no choice but to reach out to peo­ple. Many of us put our lives at risk to reach out to peo­ple. We want to gath­er them to bring hope. COVID is still with us. We have mon­key­pox with us now. We live at a time when more and more of this will be un­fold­ing.”

He prayed that Almighty God will di­rect their ac­tiv­i­ties.

He added: “These are the last days. Peo­ple think this is a joke. The Bible speaks about per­ilous times. It’s a re­al­i­ty we have to come to terms with and we have to place our trust in God.”

Mean­while, Venezue­lan Pas­tor Gei­son Ce­de­no said the mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty wants to join with T&T’s spir­i­tu­al broth­ers and sis­ters. He said they hoped that they could reach out to the gov­ern­ment to bring about a bet­ter life for the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion in this coun­try.