LIVING WATER STREAMS CONVERGE
FOR 30^th ANNIVERSARY

By Laura Ann Phillips

Thirty-two years ago, two women bravely left behind the security of a familiar life to follow God’s commission “to love and to show the world how to love”. On November 20, 2005, Rhonda Maingot and Rose Jackman, co-founders of Living Water Community (LWC), celebrated the 30^th anniversary of Living Water Community’s existence with 800 members and friends.
 

Sixty members from the community’s mission territories of Saba, St Eustatius and Barbados joined their Trinidad family for the 16 – 20 November celebrations, which culminated in a retreat and Holy Mass at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya, on the Feast of Christ the King, traditionally the community’s annual retreat day.  
 

Chief celebrant was Bishop Robert Rivas, Bishop of Kingstown, St Vincent, and the Apostolic Administrator of Barbados. Among the seven concelebrants were diocesan priests Msgr Michael de Verteuil, Rector of the Regional Seminary, and Frs Jason Gordon and Roger Paponnette, parish priests of St Martin de Porres and Rosary parishes. The three are Living Water household members. “I give thanks to God for your responding promptly to the Holy Spirit and your call to serve,” declared Bishop Rivas. “What a difference your ‘Yes’ 30 years ago has made to the Church and the society in Trinidad and Tobago and other parts of the region!”

Significantly, during the retreat earlier in the day, Rhonda told the gathering that the identity of the Living Water Community member was that of a holy person, a saint.

What God wants for each of us is to be holy. If you have no desire to become holy, you do not have the spirit of the community!” she declared. “Covenant members must have the desire if we are to be the drops of water in the stream that flows from under the temple bringing healing,” said Rhonda, referring to the Scripture passage from Ezekiel 47: 1- 12.

Working with the broken body of Christ is a natural outflow of that desire.
 

“The face of Christ lies hidden, said Bishop Rivas, and the Christian “looks for Christ not only in the safe, holy places, but in places where men and women are struggling for their very survival as human beings.”
 

Which is precisely where the community has sought Him. LWC’s social ministries include a cancer hospice for the dying, a caring centre for those who live on the street, a drug rehabilitation centre, a home for young men, a halfway house for abused and abandoned children and education programmes for women seeking to become self-sufficient. An AIDS hospice is also on the horizon, due to be opened in the near future. The community’s pastoral ministries are also fuelled by a sincere desire to proclaim the gospel and bring all people to friendship with Christ.
 

Living Water’s first mission was to Saba in the Netherlands Antilles in September 1988, and from there, flowed to St Eustatius and St Maarten. During the early 1990s, the community also ministered in Moscow and Seminovsky in Russia. The Barbados mission started January 12, 2003, and a missionary outreach in St Vincent and the Grenadines was begun earlier this year.

The week’s celebrations included an open-air prayer meeting at the community’s Frederick Street premises, a story-telling night highlighting milestones and comical episodes in the community’s history, a cruise, and a back-times fete. For visitors, these were tempered with visits to the various ministries, with the opportunity to serve in them. That would have been no strange experience, for each territory has its own social and pastoral ministries to varying degrees, as well.
 

The late Archbishop Anthony Pantin would say: “It is all God’s work!” Bishop Rivas echoed a similar sentiment.

“Living Water does all for the honour and glory of God and the salvation of others,” he declared. “Living Water, you are God’s chosen instrument for doing good and living the gospel radically!”