Over 200 mem­bers of the East­ern Re­gion came to­geth­er vir­tu­al­ly in a prayer ser­vice host­ed by Fa­ther Stephon Alexan­der, in an ef­fort to give thanks and ask for guid­ance dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for pa­tients and Health Care Work­ers. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease. 

“He gives pow­er to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak. Even the youths shall be ex­haust­ed, and the young men will give up. But they that wait up­on the Lord shall re­new their strength. They shall mount up with wings likes ea­gles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Isa­iah Chap­ter 40: Vers­es 29-31 was one of the scrip­ture read­ings de­liv­ered by Mr. Ronald Tsoi-a-Fatt, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to in­spire staff dur­ing a Vir­tu­al In­ter­faith Ser­vice host­ed on Sep­tem­ber 01,2021 un­der the theme ‘Re­ju­ve­nate’. 

Over 200 mem­bers of staff through­out the East­ern Re­gion from Matelot to Guayagua­yare and guests logged on to their elec­tron­ic de­vices to lis­ten and draw strength from the in­spi­ra­tional words. The ser­vice was host­ed by Fa­ther Stephon Alexan­der from the Coryal RC Church and in­spi­ra­tional prayers were de­liv­ered by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the In­ter Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion. Ms. Esme Rawl­ins Charles, Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the ER­HA, de­liv­ered the scrip­ture read­ing from Colos­sians Chap­ter 1 Vers­es 1-8 which re­mind­ed staff that we are all called to be holy to be set aside for God by our faith, hope and love as we live lives of ho­li­ness. 

Imi­ti­az Ali, Iman of The An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) of Trinidad and To­ba­go in his prayer asked for the peace, bless­ings, mer­cy and for­give­ness of the lord of all the world to de­scend up­on us all. He al­so asked for guid­ance un­to the right path, pro­tec­tion, the best of both worlds, pa­tience, for­give­ness, mer­cy, good­ness and suc­cess. 

Ms. Iya Mar­sha Clifton of the Coun­cil of Or­isha El­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go gave thanks and paid homage to the pos­i­tive an­ces­tors who paved the way through sac­ri­fice for hope, guid­ance and heal­ing over our land. She made a clar­i­on call to raise the pos­i­tive en­er­gy and vi­bra­tion for re­new­al, restora­tion re­gen­er­a­tion and re­ju­ve­na­tion from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Arch Abbess Mary Forde of the TRI­UNE Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tiste Church of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­vit­ed the pres­ence of the lord as she prayed for the ER­HA and the coun­try as she brought the fight of the pan­dem­ic be­fore him. She prayed for a vic­to­ry over Covid-19, a spir­it of well­ness and asked the lord to take charge of all things. 

Rep­re­sent­ing the Hin­du Com­mu­ni­ty was Pan­dit Navin Omar­dath Ma­haraj of The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In his first mes­sage he fo­cused on the one that pays trib­ute to death and one who re­cov­ers us from death and peace. He then ex­plained the three types of dif­fi­cul­ties that arise in ones lives. The bod­i­ly lev­el, physic lev­el and sit­u­a­tions around us. He asked that through our col­lec­tive ef­forts may the di­vine lord be pleased and grant us a sense of wis­dom, vi­sion and uni­ty. He fur­ther asked for the grace of the di­vine to show­er his grace and his bless­ings up­on each and every­one of us as it will take a unit­ed and joint ef­fort. 

Dr. El­lis Bur­ris of the Ba­hai Faith of Trinidad and To­ba­go con­clud­ed the prayer seg­ment with a read­ing from the writ­ings of Ba­ha­la which high­light­ed that every mal­a­dy in­flict­ing the body of man is an im­ped­i­ment that pre­vents his soul from man­i­fest­ing its in­her­ent might in pow­er. When it leaves the body it will re­veal great in­flu­ence……. every sanc­ti­fied soul will be en­dowed with tremen­dous pow­er and shall re­joice. 

In the Homi­ly, Fa­ther Alexan­der re­flect­ed on the Gospel of Luke and in­vit­ed the staff to see them­selves in an ac­tive Je­sus, a heal­er, a sav­ior and to see Je­sus in them. He in­di­cat­ed that there are sim­i­lar­i­ties in the day of the life of Je­sus and that of the health­care work­ers and the work that they are called to do. Work of heal­ing, car­ing and lov­ing. He in­vit­ed staff to see how much their own touch shows love and car­ing to those they serve. Al­though they are over­whelmed by the task they are called to per­form they bring hope to life by their lov­ing touch which brings heal­ing and com­fort even in the mo­ment of death. Once they are ground­ed in faith, hope and love their vo­ca­tion brings new per­spec­tive to those who suf­fer loss. He urged staff to recog­nise when they are over­bur­den and to find mo­ments of peace and to be re­newed by the lov­ing pres­ence in God so that they can share that love and that car­ing with those who they min­is­ter. 

Dur­ing his ad­dress the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer in­formed the ER­HA’s team that 538 days af­ter the Au­thor­i­ty joined the bat­tle against COVID-19 they had ad­min­is­tered over 97,900 vac­cines dos­es to as­sist clients in the fight. He ac­knowl­edged that to achieve this re­sult many per­son­al sac­ri­fices were made by staff and they con­tin­ued to go be­yond the call of du­ty. Mr. Tsoi-a-Fatt recog­nised the con­tri­bu­tion of the ER­HA Team and en­cour­aged them to pause, re­flect and re­ju­ve­nate. He al­so re­mind­ed them to nev­er stop do­ing what they do for oth­ers, even lit­tle things for some­times those lit­tle things oc­cu­py the biggest part of the hearts of clients.