Fay­ola K J Fras­er

In­spired by God, “Can­dle­light Re­flec­tions with Christ” is Vernie Vic­to­ria Ap­pi­ah’s de­but book.

In ef­forts to share her own jour­ney with God and en­cour­age oth­ers to draw clos­er to Him, she de­tails through­out the book the di­vine mes­sages that she has re­ceived from God over many years.

De­scrib­ing her­self as an “obe­di­ent per­son to God who just loves to love and loves peo­ple,” she came back to her na­tive T&T on a mis­sion up­on re­ceiv­ing a call­ing from God to share his word more wide­ly in our coun­try.

Orig­i­nal­ly born and raised in T&T, she has been based in Lon­don for a num­ber of decades, af­ter leav­ing T&T to pur­sue nurs­ing in the UK in 1966. Ap­pi­ah got mar­ried in the UK and had four chil­dren, all of whom are now adults.

Ap­pi­ah cred­its her now de­ceased hus­band for the en­cour­age­ment and in­spi­ra­tion to write her book and al­so for his ded­i­ca­tion in read­ing and edit­ing the book on her be­half.

Ap­pi­ah was al­so mo­ti­vat­ed by a friend in her church to write, and she worked close­ly with her to un­der­stand var­i­ous writ­ing tech­niques as she be­gan to put pen to pa­per.

The book was pub­lished in 2020 on Ama­zon, dur­ing the COVID lock­down pe­ri­od and she re­mem­bers the rush of ex­cite­ment and emo­tion they all shared, fi­nal­ly see­ing her words of­fi­cial­ly on pa­per.

“Writ­ing is a gift from God,” Ap­pi­ah says and cred­its the Holy Spir­it with giv­ing her the di­vine in­spi­ra­tion and con­nec­tion to get her words on­to pa­per.

She has come to Trinidad on a mis­sion trip in­spired by God to re­lieve the de­praved state of our na­tion through prayer.

She re­mem­bers the words giv­en to her through her di­vine re­flec­tions: “Trinidad and To­ba­go has too much blood and is cry­ing out. The church­es are en­gag­ing in mi­nor things and not ma­jor things. The rich­es of the land of T&T have been raped for man’s glo­ry.”

She ar­rived in T&T in June and has spent the time jour­ney­ing through the coun­try, meet­ing with church and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and vis­it­ing var­i­ous church­es to share the mes­sage of prayer.

Deeply pas­sion­ate about her coun­try, she went to her church and laid her hand on the flag of T&T, “and I didn’t cry, but I bawled.”

She de­scribed this pas­sion for the na­tion as al­most a bur­den be­cause she has con­tin­ued to give up prayers un­ceas­ing­ly to bring heal­ing to the land. Heart­bro­ken by the lack of god­li­ness in the coun­try and even in some re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties, she hopes that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans will al­so be­gin to put faith at the cen­tre of their lives. Her ad­vice to church and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers in T&T is to “pray, let God show you the way and give you rev­e­la­tion on how to go about help­ing and heal­ing the na­tion.”