AFTER years of searching, Safiya Hemenez has found community, love and fulfilment through the Spiritual Baptist faith. The former Jehovah's Witness shared her journey with WMN.

Hemenez, 34, originally lived in Chaguanas but moved to Port of Spain at age seven. She said she had a fun childhood and grew up around an extended family.

"So it would be my aunts, uncles, grandparents, mother...

"I was usually inside. I was very shy and I still kind of am. I would read, I would teach my dolls, I had pets...My aunt is a seamstress so she would usually teach me to sew and I would sew dolly clothes or help her do stuff."

She recalled being "very much involved" in the family's Jehovah's Witness practises and beliefs, but as she got older, "I started to wonder: 'What else is there (out there for me)?'

"I wanted to learn a lot more."

There was a time she was unwell, and despite numerous visits to different doctors, no one could figure out what was wrong with her.

"I would sit down on the step and I would pray. I would tell God, 'I don't know what is going on with me but I need you to guide me. I want you to carry me somewhere that you want me to be.'"

[caption id="attachment_1074117" align="alignnone" width="683"] Safiya Hemenez finds community, love and fulfilment in her Spiritual Baptist faith. - Photo by Roger Jacob[/caption]

Around that time, one of her friends was hosting a fitness camp and invited her, in hopes it would help her feel better, but to no avail.

She tried visiting a doctor again, who misdiagnosed her with cancer.

"I cried. I real cried. I called my friend immediately and walked home crying."

But her friend told her she would take her to a place where she could get spiritual help.

She was taken to see who are now her spiritual parents in the faith.

"I know some people think you have to do all these things, but it was very simple. After a week, the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me and I felt great."

Her spiritual father then invited her to come to his church – St Ann's Mystical Healing School, Couva – and she accepted as she had desperately been "looking for somewhere" to call her spiritual home.

"I asked a lot of questions because it was new to me. The way he broke things down and explained things – the first time I heard him preach, I said, 'This is for me.'

"The drums, the vibe, how I felt in those surroundings...From that day, I never looked back."

By age 21, she fully transitioned from being a Jehovah's Witness to a Spiritual Baptist.

She said while growing up, she was always warned to stay away from Baptists and to never join that faith.

"That's what you are taught. (You are taught that) Baptists do obeah and all Baptists bad and it's not God they're worshipping...And it is because many people don't know the dynamics of the faith. But when you really get into it, you would see that it is not like that.

"It is about your God and you; it is about how you interact with your God."

The process of moaning (prayer and fast in seclusion/isolation) in the Ba