HEALING IN THE VINEYARD
... Watt Town-based church bringing deliverance
The vineyard keepers at the Zion Headquarters and Jerusalem Schoolroom in Watt Town, St. Ann, are adamant that they don’t practise ‘obeah.’
“We nuh know nothing bout nuh obeah. We just worship normal. If somebody is sick, we try to help them,” Carol Solas, who has been living at the church as a vineyard keeper since 1982 told THE STAR.
She said that the revival church performs healing rituals, a service for which persons are asked to pay a fee. Solas said that persons have been given baths for numerous things including to provide healing for various illnesses.
“I have seen a lot of miracles but sometimes people sick and we trying to help them but di sickness gone too far, but people come here and get healing,” Solas said.
VARIOUS BATHS
Edgar Linton, 65, another of the vineyard keepers, said plants grown in the churchyard are used in the various baths.
“All these bushes are medicine. Yuh can boil some of them and drink. Some a dem yuh can bathe wid,” he said, pointing to a shrub.
Linton said that he has seen persons cured instantly after a bath is performed.
“If yuh sick, yuh get healing if yuh believe in it. It is a blessed place. Cripple come up here and come off the hill walking,” he told THE STAR.
Solas insists that the church, which is open 24/7 for worship, with special services held on Thursdays and Sundays, four times a day, shares similarities with other churches.
“We are not really different from other churches. We sing just like them. The other churches they sing, clap and dance but we also mek sounds,” she said.
Those sounds, she said, come from heaven.
“It is coming from God. Revivalism come from our African ancestors so it is more spiritual,” she said.
“The more you worship is the more you get in the vibes, suh yu may start to jump or do different actions,” Solas explains.
She urges persons to stop linking the church’s operation to obeah.
“When you hear dem talking about obeah, not a thing guh like dat. I live here and I don’t know bout dat,” she said.