Michelle Loubon

From the safe­ty of the Je­sus The Light of this World Min­istries church yard, evan­ge­list Shirlain Fer­min and prophet­ess Cindy Blanc looked on in hor­ror as the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ church, at the Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma was fur­ther des­e­crat­ed on Wednes­day. It was van­dalised to the point where its dome col­lapsed and two men were in­jured. Be­hav­ing like vul­tures, loot­ers de­scend­ed up­on the con­tentious church. The church had shot in­to na­tion­al promi­nence af­ter it was re­port­ed it was owned by Ju­liana Pe­na, the spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er of for­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning. It was re­port­ed­ly be­ing built at the cost of $30 mil­lion.

Based on their Chris­t­ian be­liefs, they said, "Once the Cross came down, noth­ing but de­struc­tion would have fol­lowed." They said the con­gre­ga­tion felt that no mat­ter what the is­sues were sur­round­ing the church, it was un­for­giv­able the man­ner in which the loot­ers had treat­ed the church. Fer­min re­peat­ed her call for the "in­vis­i­ble project man­ag­er to come for­ward."

Fer­min's eye wit­ness ac­count:

She said: "Around 1.30 pm on Wednes­day, we saw a lot of Ras­ta­men up there. It seemed as though a whole vil­lage was up there. It had al­ready made a bel­ly. They had start­ed pulling the steel from un­der­neath it and it fell down. All the ma­te­r­i­al that was around the church had al­ready been re­moved. "Then, a guy start­ed cut­ting down the post with a sol­der­ing ma­chine. He had two big gas tanks in the back of the pick up. Some time be­fore T&TEC had cut the light on the build­ing." When she no­ticed the cross was tak­en down, Fer­min turned to her niece and said, "Some­body will die for what they have done."

Lat­er on, as they con­tin­ued in­ter­fer­ing with the pil­lars, we heard a sound and saw peo­ple throw­ing them­selves from off the top of the build­ing. "They were on the third floor. It is very high. We felt more peo­ple had died." "We had been watch­ing them. They were be­hav­ing like thieves and rob­bers in the House of the Lord." "They are not do­ing the Lord's work. They are do­ing the work of the en­e­my."

Fer­min said they had treat­ed the Lord's build­ing like a toy. "They just stripped it un­til it couldn't stand up any­more."

Trans­port Man re­pents

On Thurs­day, one gen­tle­man who de­scribed him­self as the "Trans­port Man" said, "I made about $200 to $300 a trip. I got steady work. Some of them us­ing the ma­te­r­i­al for good things. I dropped some by the Bye Pass. Some sell­ing it for scrap like 40 cents and 50 cents. Some of them fix­ing their house." But on Wednes­day when the dome col­lapsed, he said he was hav­ing sec­ond thoughts. Cou­pled with the warn­ing of evan­ge­list Shirlain Fer­min and an eye­wit­ness ac­count of the dome's col­lapse, he said, "I think that is it for me af­ter to­day. I quit," he said.