…a story of strength and faith
How would you have reacted or felt if you were in church worshipping God and all of a sudden you were informed that your home is being ravaged by fire? On Father’s Day last year (June 19), mother of three, Doreen Sutherland, 43, suffered that fate.
She was at the Bethel Prayer and Praise Assembly in New Amsterdam at a Father’s Day service when she was informed by a relative shortly after 10:00am that her home and everything in it was being consumed.
She immediately left church for her Lot 66 King Street residence where she saw all her life’s earnings going up in flames. The house she toiled to furnish with computers for her school- aged kids, household appliances, furniture and her prized sewing machine through which she made a living, all going up in flames.
It was one of the biggest fires in recent times in the Berbice community.
But onlookers got the shock of their lives when they saw not a crying, screaming and complaining Sutherland. Doreen Sutherland upon seeing the destruction of her beloved home began to sing and pray and sing some more.
She arrived singing “The Lord will restore it all”, she said. “My God is a great God!” she exclaimed, then started to sing hymns and speak in tongues. The crowds gathered and looked on in amazement at the woman who had lost virtually everything she had owned but still found strength to sing songs of praise and giving thanks to her God.
Her sister also joined in the singing and praising. “The Lord knows!” she shouted with her arms wide opened praising and giving thanks.
It was a remarkable juxtaposition: a fire ravaging your entire home and the owner with outstretched arms, singing, praying, and rejoicing. It’s not what a reporter would normally see when covering a fire. Ms Sutherland, jobless, had lost everything.
We revisited Ms Sutherland on Old Year’s Day, the final day of the year, to see how she was coping with the loss. She is now residing in a little building that stood adjacent to the burnt home. Amazingly that building was saved by the firefighters. She was doing some knitting on her step. She knits now and again to make ends meet.
She had a bright smile on her face. Sutherland is quite an optimist. She was jovial. She told Kaieteur News that the Lord had prepared her well in advance in that same week for that bit of suffering she had to endure.
“The word that was coming to me, like in Exodus 15, when he speak about praising the Lord and you going to exalt God, and after all that I went through with sickness and other different trials, the victory I have got!”
“God has strengthened his children before things happen. I normally get my visions, but I didn’t get any vision of the fire, or I would have rebuked it. I know the Lord was with me. All my hope is in Him”, she noted.
Sutherland said that her life was punctuated with numerous forms of suffering over the years, including a lengthy illness of her daughter. But she remained steadfast, “and fasted and prayed, that really motivated me kept me connected to God”.
“I just saw that [the fire] as a form of affliction, trials and testing where God is strengthening me to bring me to a higher height,” she noted.
“God tests our faith in different ways to see who is our God, if it is material things or He”.
During the days after the fire, it was difficult. “When you’re accustomed to having certain equipment and appliances and you (are accustomed) to a certain life—I am a person, if the Spirit leads me to put on me Gospel 12 o’ clock in the night, it dey on till morning—I used to listen to the Church programmes and these things; this affected the things of God”.
She did receive some assistance from the Seventh – day Adventist Church and Food for the Poor, for which she is very grateful. She and her husband, Elfroy Bart, are trying to rebuild their home. They have begun to gather some materials but are still in need of some zinc sheets and other building material.
2011 was a year of suffering for her and her family, according to Sutherland. “I went through so many things, to the last of losing all that you earned”, she reflected. There were days of “famine, lack of finances, lack of employment, destruction of her property”. She also lost all her ducklings to poisoning. Her kitchen garden was flooded out by heavy rains. “We went through it, but I bless God for my children, my fruit, the manifestation of contentment in my life”, she said.
Her daughter, Natoya, finished President’s College recently and came out with 12 CSEC passes and Sheama finished the New Amsterdam Multilateral School came out with another 12 CSEC passes, with very good grades.
She noted that the family’s financial situation had a great impact on the further perfection of her children’s results. “If we had the money at hand, they would have done better, but not having the money to support extra lessons and when they call for these textbooks—that’s a problem right now because one right now is in Fourth Form (Elroy), and another in Grade 6 (Shana)—but I still trust in God”, she stated.
She took time to thank God for sparing their lives on that fateful day since they all could have been in the house at the time. “And the fire could have been in the night, and the house was barred all over, but what was heading me for bad, God turned it into good”.
“And even when the fire was telling itself I was going to be in my house, I was in His house [church] giving praise”.
Ms Sutherland received a small job with the GPL in November. She also does a bit of sewing and knitting now and again but really wants a good sewing machine to start doing what she loves doing most. She was well prepared to attend Church on Old Year’s Night. Hers is a story of pure determination and strength amidst adversity after adversity.