Tears flowed freely, some per­sons’ arms were spread wide, palms fac­ing up­wards, while oth­ers chose to jump and dance aban­don­ing all in­hi­bi­tions and bar­ing all emo­tions at the In His Pres­ence (IHP) 9 gospel con­cert last week­end.

Hun­dreds of gospel mu­sic en­thu­si­asts gath­ered at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Fa­cil­i­ty for the an­nu­al event, as the space was trans­formed in­to a place of wor­ship.

In His Pres­ence (IHP) holds its own as one of To­ba­go’s pre­mier cal­en­dar events, at­tract­ing pa­trons from Trinidad and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

This year, the head­line act Tasha Cobbs was forced out due to ill health but her re­place­ment, Maran­da Cur­tis, did not dis­ap­point pa­trons.

Cur­tis’ soul­ful de­liv­ery of her many hits, in­clud­ing Be Glo­ri­fied and Open Heav­en, plucked on the emo­tions of many of her fans, bring­ing many of them to tears.

Reg­gae gospel artist Pa­pa San, from Ja­maica, brought a dif­fer­ent vibe to the con­cert. He was equal­ly as good.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, he re­ferred to the pe­ri­od in his life when he was “liv­ing in the world” and ex­posed to many sec­u­lar things. His de­liv­ery was re­lat­able and pas­sion­ate and he open­ly spoke about the “walk with Christ.”

Pa­trons sang along lusti­ly with one of his song’s lyrics, “Je­sus made me smile again, Je­sus make me scream again, Je­sus make me walk again.”

Lo­cal artistes such as Pos­i­tive and Blessed Mes­sen­ger al­so held their own and rep­re­sent­ed To­ba­go well.

Blessed Mes­sen­ger, who is known for his en­er­gy, gave the crowd a boost, while Joel “Pos­i­tive” Mur­ray matched that en­er­gy as he belt­ed out hit af­ter hit, in­clud­ing the crowd favourite “Bless­ing af­ter Bless­ing.”

Pro­mot­er Verne Joseph de­scribed last week­end’s con­cert as a re­sound­ing suc­cess in com­par­i­son to re­cent years.

“This years’ event was amaz­ing not on­ly in terms of par­tic­i­pa­tion but al­so in terms of min­istry.”

He said al­though he re­ceived re­ports of flight can­cel­la­tions and the can­cel­la­tions of the Cabo Star’s sail­ings on Thurs­day night and Fri­day af­ter­noon, at­ten­dance at the con­cert ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions.