Trinidad: Church services resume at rehab centre that was raided

(Trinidad Guardian) Church ser­vices re­sumed on Sat­ur­day at the Trans­formed Life Min­istry, East­ern Main Road in Arou­ca and the at­ten­dance was de­scribed as “the usu­al.”

The Pas­tor, Glen Awong, was al­so said to be “do­ing well.”

 
Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, a long-stand­ing church mem­ber, from since in­cep­tion, who wished not to be named, said since last Wednes­day’s po­lice op­er­a­tion where 69 res­i­dents from the Min­istry’s Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre were tak­en away by the po­lice, the church mem­bers and staff have all been af­fect­ed.

She claimed that all they need­ed was for the truth to come out, in­sist­ing that there was no hu­man traf­fick­ing and mod­ern-day slav­ery tak­ing place at the cen­tre.

For the first time since the op­er­a­tion, Awong re­sumed ser­vices on Sat­ur­day.

“All I can say is that my pas­tor is con­tin­u­ing to trust in God for the truth to come out and he is do­ing all his best…Well, I went to church on Sat­ur­day and we praised God and he (re­fer­ring to Awong) was do­ing well…I be­ing re­al miss, is re­al­ly false al­le­ga­tions they have against the man,” the mem­ber said.

Asked what Awong’s ser­mon was about on Sat­ur­day, she did not spec­i­fy but gave a gen­er­al idea of what he preach­es.

“He will preach like every oth­er church…about God, about the Ten Com­mand­ments…every thing comes from the Bible. He would read the Bible and ex­plain it to the church. He will talk about bap­tism, you know like nor­mal thing when you go to church what you will hear.”

She added: “He al­ways want you to cov­er up your head, wear long clothes to cov­er up your body. He is a fa­ther fig­ure to me and al­so, a teacher. He nev­er tell me no false al­le­ga­tions…all those things they say­ing is false, false, false.”

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith will host a news con­fer­ence at 1pm to­day on “the le­gal­i­ty of the treat­ment of per­sons in cen­tres”.