Finding a Centre

109 Frederick Street

Fr Jason Gordon recounts two kinds of work on the Community:

At a meeting at St Anthony’s College, we were listening to God about the Community and its direction.  Following that meeting in which there were many suggestions, Rhonda decided on a “Centre for Jesus” in Port of Spain.  109 Frederick Street was available a couple months later.

In December, when Rhonda told me that Lloyd Hodgkinson had found a building, I thought she was kidding.  She assured me we had found a building and we were paying down on it the next day.  I told her we had no money.  She agreed but signed a cheque.

When we saw the building next evening, the whole place was a mess.  It had been locked up and was dirty.  I thought it could never be a community centre.  That night, the Community gathered there, and listened to God’s word.  In that massive building, divided up into all those little offices, the only thing the Lord could find to say was that the building was already too small!  The word was to “stretch out the pegs of your tent’ to accommodate all the things that the centre should have.  We didn’t manage to stretch the sides, but we went up a floor, moving the roof higher.

At that stage the men and women of the community would gather after work.  We started knocking down the walls of the smaller offices on the second floor and clearing away the rubble.  More work was done on us as a community while the centre was being built on Frederick Street.

It took five months of very hard work, rubbing shoulders, quarrelling, being disappointed, thinking it would never finish, wondering what would happen next.  Rose used to pray a very special prayer.  It was the prayer of David.  Ever so often Rhonda’s face would grow long, and she would look a little worried.  Then Rose would take out her beads and pray: “Lord, you have promised to bless your people and you said what you bless, you bless forever.”

Sometimes money used to come in $10,000 at a time.  Often money would run out, and Rose would pray that prayer on the days when wages were due, materials had to be bought, or whatever had to be got, and money would come in that day or the next to just meet our needs.

When the centre opened, it was another story.  One day, Rhonda said it had to be opened in two weeks.  At that time wires were hanging all over the place, nothing was ready.  I said she was mad.  But she said it had to be opened because we had no money.  The centre opened on June 1^st.  It was a really incredible experience of community.  The ground floor was opened, but the upstairs was still a complete mess.  We would meet up there to pray, while the work was being done.

When the centre opened, I was still in business with all my commitments.  But I found myself more and more at the centre, less and less at my business place.  There was a renovation of my own heart to listen to what God was calling me to.  It was not long before I gave up the business to come full time into community.  Many other men experienced this.  So when we renovated the centre, there were two kinds of work being done.
 

Working together to create a Centre for Jesus