Car­ol Quash

An­gli­can Rev­erend Danielle Pon­ti­f­let’s life has al­ways been cen­tred around the church. But it took some time be­fore she un­der­stood and ac­cept­ed her call­ing—ser­vice to God as an or­dained min­is­ter, with a spe­cial em­pha­sis on so­ci­ety’s foun­da­tion.

“My call­ing is that of a priest, so I am avail­able to every­body. But I place spe­cial min­istry on fam­i­lies and chil­dren,” she told WE in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Pon­ti­f­let is cur­rent­ly as­signed to the St Mary’s Parish in Tacarigua, help­ing to spread the gospel in word and deed.

“We re­spond to the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty, so our An­gli­can schools, and oth­er schools in the area, are part of re­spond­ing to the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty be­cause ed­u­ca­tion plays a role in re­duc­ing pover­ty and help­ing peo­ple to be­come self-sus­tain­able…We aid the ef­fort in build­ing holis­tic in­di­vid­u­als to know God, so they have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­stand that some­body cares, some­body is lis­ten­ing, and there’s help.”

Pon­ti­f­let, an em­ploy­ee at the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, of­fi­cial­ly heed­ed her call­ing as a dea­con in 2017, and a lit­tle over four years lat­er, lis­tened to the voice that led her to a sem­i­nary in Bar­ba­dos in prepa­ra­tion for her or­di­na­tion as a priest, al­beit with a bit of push­back.

“When the Lord said to me, ‘This is where I want you to be,’ we were fight­ing.

“I was like, ‘nah, you’re not be­ing re­al.’”

She said He point­ed out her lead­er­ship ten­den­cies, cit­ing times when she’d at­tend a work­shop as a par­tic­i­pant and end up teach­ing; or when she’d join a group meet­ing and re­alised she al­ready knew what was be­ing dis­cussed.

“He said, ‘I made you a leader to lead. You will reach more per­sons in this po­si­tion than where you are now.’”

Pon­ti­f­let sought ad­vice from her bish­op and priest, and even­tu­al­ly went to the sem­i­nary to test her vo­ca­tion. But, in prepa­ra­tion for that, she had to let go of some neg­a­tive tenets, among them her dis­like for read­ing, which could have ham­pered her stud­ies.

“I told Him, ‘You have to help me be­cause I don’t like read­ing. So you’re go­ing to have to help me be­cause they’re go­ing to give me as­sign­ments, and I need to stay up. I just want to read what I want to read, oth­er­wise I fall asleep.’”

When she re­turned home a year lat­er, she was first as­signed to Holy Sav­iour Church in Curepe be­fore be­ing re­as­signed to St Mary’s.

As a child, Pon­ti­f­let was bap­tised in­to the An­gli­can faith and has been a faith­ful mem­ber ever since. She be­lieves her min­istry be­gan long be­fore her or­di­na­tion.

“I re­mem­ber one time watch­ing one of the old­er ladies in church and won­der­ing why she had to be drag­ging her­self down to the church to take care of it.”

She plead­ed with God to help her re­main com­mit­ted to the church so she could do her part, in­stead of hav­ing the el­ders go through the “pain” of hav­ing to help main­tain the church.

“That was just a naive state­ment. Look­ing back at what I saw as pain, I re­alised that was her ded­i­cat­ing her­self to God’s work.”

And al­though she didn’t ac­knowl­edge it then, God had al­ready be­gun prepar­ing her heart for her spir­i­tu­al mis­sion.

“It’s just that we get to a point where we tune in more and the sound gets more clear­er; not loud­er, just clear­er.”

Pon­ti­f­let, 43, re­called when she and her teenage friends got to­geth­er and planned and im­ple­ment­ed an en­tire church sports day, com­plete with medals and prizes, with­out spend­ing a dol­lar.

“I think in that mo­ment it was like a steal of a deal. Like, ‘Okay, God, clear­ly You ex­ist be­cause we prayed about this and You made it hap­pen, so clear­ly You are lis­ten­ing. Every­body keeps talk­ing about You; every­body keeps telling me, ‘God is this, and God is that’, but I don’t want any­body else to tell me who You are, ex­cept You. You tell me who You are. Talk to me in a way that I will un­der­stand.’”

She said she wait­ed, but still could not dis­cern his voice. She de­cid­ed to seek his voice by read­ing the Bible. But her dis­like for read­ing left her floun­der­ing.

“I said, ‘Lord, You need to help me be­cause I’m try­ing to fig­ure out Your ex­is­tence here. And if You re­al­ly ex­ist, You need to help me to get through this book they call the Bible.”

And then di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, in the form of tech­nol­o­gy, stepped in. Pon­ti­f­let doesn’t re­call ex­act­ly how it hap­pened, but sud­den­ly, au­dio­books be­gan pop­ping up on her in­ter­net feed. She down­loaded a drama­tised ver­sion of the Bible on her Mp3 play­er and was able to lis­ten to it any­where she went. But a les­son in mod­er­a­tion and rel­e­vance was al­so part of the pack­age.

“I re­alised af­ter a while I was lis­ten­ing, but I wasn’t hear­ing any­thing. So I stopped there, and I rolled over in my mind, for days, every­thing that went be­fore. And I ob­served dif­fer­ent things that were hap­pen­ing around me. And I was able to say, ‘That’s just like that sto­ry in Ex­o­dus.’”

The Rev be­lieves that was God telling her to stop and pon­der; to see His ex­pla­na­tions, not in words, but in day-to-day oc­cur­rences.

“’And in your spir­it, in your be­ing, what I would say now is the Holy Spir­it say­ing to you.’ That’s what He was say­ing. I’m still learn­ing; I’m still grow­ing.”

Pon­ti­f­let laments that T&T cul­ture has seen a shift in the idea that the church is for re­tirees.

She said prayers, es­pe­cial­ly for young peo­ple is the ba­sic “God, take care of my fam­i­ly; thank You for this meal; give us a good night’s rest,” un­less some­body gets sick, or they have ex­ams.

“Be­cause we know that God is the God that will re­spond to us at those points and times, so that has been our prac­tise.”

The church, she said, is tak­ing mea­sures to change that cul­tur­al mind­set by go­ing to the foun­da­tion —rein­tro­duc­ing God in­to the schools through re­treats, chapel ser­vices, men­tor­ship, dis­cus­sions and lead­ing by ex­am­ple.

“So in that way, they come to un­der­stand that God is there, not just for ex­ams, but for every­thing.”

As she con­tin­ues her min­istry, Pon­ti­f­let’s aim is to be the best ver­sion of her hu­man and spir­i­tu­al self.

“I think that’s prob­a­bly where we dropped the ball and where a lot of young peo­ple have lost faith, be­cause we for­get that a priest is a hu­man. We (priests) are just try­ing to work through our faith and live out our faith the way God wants us to, in ser­vice to Him and to His peo­ple. Our ser­vice is in this par­tic­u­lar place, in this par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion, at this par­tic­u­lar time.”