A flood of Christmas lights for Grande*

By Kristian Luces

Although still recovering from the October 2018 floods, St Francis of Assisi RC Church, Sangre Grande dealt with a new flood… of Christmas lights!

For the Christmas season this year, the yard, façade and interior of the church were decorated by the youth of the Church, among them members of the Altar Servers, Hospitality and Youth Ministry.

Bradley Jagroop, Kael Mc Intosh and I led the decorating which took more than 50 man-hours to complete using over 23,000 lights.

Originally, we were told that a team of persons had been organised to lead decorating so we thought “That’s great, for the first time we (young people) don’t have to be involved in the setting up of something in the parish.”

However, two days before the lights were to be turned on a message was sent out asking youths for assistance in running the lights. Primarily, it was just to light the trees along the driveway, but when we started to do that, the ideas just kept coming to mind and we felt to do more than what was asked. I thought, “That’s okay, nothing but the best for Jesus!”

The display included lights wrapped on all the trees on both sides of drive way to enter and exit the church. A six-foot star on top of the bell tower was marked out with the lights, and on the façade of the church, lights draped on the lower half then to the top illuminating the massiveness of the Cross.

Inside the church, we placed garlands with multicoloured lights on both walls in the main nave with two large wreaths placed in both wings, and finally lights beautifully draped on the balcony upstairs.

Many parishioners expressed joy when they saw how the church looks at night. You will never know that our church was affected by the flood.

The late hours and hard work also provided such comradery amongst us, even leading to meaningful discussions at times. I truly believe this exercise was blessed by Jesus, Our Lord.