Af­ter two years of be­ing un­able to gath­er to­geth­er in large num­bers in a pub­lic space, the ex­ec­u­tive team of Pan Trin­ba­go led by pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore yes­ter­day host­ed a prayer ser­vice to kick off the start of month-long cel­e­bra­tions com­mem­o­rat­ing the in­ven­tion of the steel pan- Steel­pan month

De­spite the on­go­ing in­ter­nal chal­lenges she con­tin­ues to face as its leader, Ram­sey-Moore de­clared be­fore God and the small group of mem­bers who turned up at the All Saints An­gli­can Church, Mar­li Street, New­town that fol­low­ing the COVID-19 re­stric­tions and lock­downs, “We are still stand­ing.”

Pre­sid­ing over the pro­ceed­ings was An­gli­can Dean Shelly-Ann Tenia, who urged the ex­ec­u­tive to keep striv­ing to pro­mote lo­cal cul­ture and most es­pe­cial­ly, T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment which could now be found mak­ing beau­ti­ful mu­sic in var­i­ous quar­ters around the world.

In de­liv­er­ing the ser­mon, Rev Michael Lawrence said God had con­tin­ued to bless the or­ga­ni­za­tion - in spite of the bac­cha­nal that had plagued it off and on for the past 30 years.

He urged those present to cel­e­brate the suc­cess­es of each oth­er while lift­ing up one an­oth­er.

“No mat­ter what pres­sure comes our way, we have to re­mem­ber that the Lord is good to us and His mer­cy will en­dure for­ev­er.”

Lawrence ad­vised the Pan Trin­ba­go lead­er­ship to keep forg­ing ahead and to re­main fo­cused on grow­ing the steel pan cul­ture in T&T as he told them, “You are holis­tic.”

In her brief re­marks, Ram­sey-Moore said the or­gan­i­sa­tion which had been born out of strug­gle and re­sis­tance had to look be­yond this as she said, “In 2023, we must strug­gle no more.”

Call­ing on mem­bers to recog­nise their worth, she urged them to once again be­come their broth­er’s keep­er.

De­siree My­ers of the North­ern Re­gion al­so ac­knowl­edged that a lot of love was need­ed at this time.

She too urged, “We must keep on ask­ing God to pro­tect us and bring love and uni­ty to the steel-band move­ment.”