Ten­nille Al­leyne

Some peo­ple may say that 32 year old Deb­o­rah Dowlath has an in­ter­est­ing life sto­ry. A young schol­ar who once at­tend­ed Na­pari­ma Girls High School with the so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions of be­com­ing a cor­po­rate mogul some day, has con­scious­ly stepped out life's rat race to serve God through her pas­sion of serv­ing oth­ers. Though it may have come as a sur­prise move for some, those who re­al­ly knew Dowlath view her de­ci­sion as be­ing per­fect­ly aligned with who Deb­bie al­ways was- a true al­tru­ist at heart. Born and raised in Dow Vil­lage South Oropouche in­to a Chris­t­ian house­hold, Dowlath rec­og­nized very ear­ly the need to help oth­ers from par­ents who were al­ways in­volved in Chris­t­ian ac­tiv­i­ties and sib­lings who fol­lowed suit. She was heav­i­ly in­volved in va­ca­tion Bible School and plan­ning sum­mer camps for her church while sup­port­ing the In­ter-Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship group as a stu­dent. Af­ter com­plet­ing her ed­u­ca­tion at her al­ma ma­ta, she con­tin­ued her aca­d­e­mics in Com­put­er Stud­ies and Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies where she grad­u­at­ed with first class ho­n­ours. Soon af­ter she sought em­ploy­ment at an ac­count­ing con­sul­tan­cy, then more re­cent­ly at a soft­ware com­pa­ny where she stayed for five years.

" I was al­ways very good at com­put­er re­lat­ed things but I was nev­er pas­sion­ate about it" she says can­did­ly. Sad­ly, in 2006 she faced a se­ries of life chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ences which made her for­ev­er ques­tion her pur­pose in the cor­po­rate world. " That year many peo­ple who were close to me died. It got to the point where every month I at­tend­ed a fu­ner­al. The one that re­al­ly re­al­ly hit me was a la­dy from my church died who died sud­den­ly" Dowlath ad­mit­ted. "I took some time to re­flect and won­dered if God was try­ing to tell me some­thing through all those peo­ple dy­ing" she added. Re-eval­u­at­ing God's pur­pose for her life, Deb­o­rah de­cid­ed to go on a mis­sion trip to Haiti. " We helped build a school that need­ed con­struc­tion. Even though I didn't know any­thing about con­struc­tion, I just want­ed to see if this was what I need­ed to do with my life" she said. Ad­mit­ting that the trip was "rough" by any stan­dard, Dowlath slept on the ground in the ro­dent in­fest­ed school with no run­ning wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty, but sur­pris­ing­ly said the ex­pe­ri­ence was ex­cel­lent . " I en­joyed it thor­ough­ly. I en­joyed in­ter­act­ing with the chil­dren al­though I didn't speak Cre­ole and they didn't speak Eng­lish" she said.

Quick­ly recog­nis­ing her life's pur­pose, in 2005 Dowlath re­turned as a mis­sion­ary to Haiti mul­ti­ple times, Guyana, Ojague, Guinea in West Africa, St. Lu­cia and many oth­er places while still work­ing at her day job. " All our mis­sion trips are cause-ori­ent­ed. In some sit­u­a­tions, we would do con­struc­tion where we would help pur­chase sup­plies, ma­te­ri­als, wa­ter and food. If we have doc­tors and nurs­es on board, we would set up a free med­ical clin­ic for the vil­lagers" she said. While do­ing a good deed, Dowlath and her group nev­er for­get to share the Word of God . " In what­ev­er we do, we share the love of Je­sus Christ. We are ba­si­cal­ly His hands and feet while on earth" said the proud mis­sion­ary.