George Henry-Beryl Tomlinson-Dussie

GEORGE HENRY, STAR Writer
MALVERN, St Elizabeth

Beryl Tomlinson-Dussie was brought up in a Christian home in Westmoreland. As a child, she was taught by her parents the importance of humility, especially for those who served the Lord.

Tomlinson-Dussie grew up on a diet of Christian principles and never tired of hearing the word of God, so it was no surprise to anyone that she would commit herself to Christ at a young age.

"It is my growing-up why I am like this. I did not have any pasttime. My dad could not read, but my mother could, and so we had to go to church, we had to go to Sunday school, and nobody rebelled," noted Tomlinson-Dussie.

She said she had to read the Bible to her father almost every day, had to say prayers before she and her seven siblings, also Christians, went to sleep. She has continued these practices to this day, although she is a veteran in the Church of the Nazarene at Truro, Burnt Savannah, in Westmoreland.

Tomlinson-Dussie, who currently serves as a Sunday school teacher at her church, told THE STAR that she is enjoying her Christian walk and has had no regrets serving God. She believes that all Christians should be easily recognised and no one should have to tell others that they are workers of the Lord.

"If you are a Christian, strangers should be able to say, 'there goes a Christian', and you should be emulated by such persons. The way you dress, your deportment and the matter of how you talk, and so on. If you are a Christian, you are a Christian, and if you are of the world, you are of the world," said the Sunday school teacher.

The churchwoman wants all children of God to be good ambassadors for the Creator and to display good Christian examples for others who are not yet converted so that they, too, can be drawn to Christ. She added that if persons are saved, the beauty of Jesus must always be seen in them.

She is not impressed with the way some Christians dress to enter the house of the Lord, especially the so-called born-again Christians. She believes the standard of dressing for Christians has broken down and though she is not saying that Christians should go back to the old ways of dressing, she wants worshippers to take more pride in the way they adorn themselves to enter the house of worship.

Tomlinson-Dussie made it clear that the values that were taught to her by her parents regarding dressing for church or church functions are still a part of her, and that she will continue to live those values. Now the mother of three, she has brought up all her children to understand what it means to be modest in dressing for worship and for other occasions.

Though she spends a lot of time educating the members of her Sunday school class, Tomlinson-Dussie does not only believe in spiritual education. She is currently a member of a team at her church that also gives time to educate persons from the church as well as the community in other subject areas such as computer education and GSAT preparation, among others.

As a Sunday school teacher, she believes that it is most important that parents send their children to church. She made it clear that parents should never allow their children to dictate what they do on days when church is in session; but should instead ensure that they are all in church learning how to live a life for the Lord.

"Parents should never be in church and their children gone to play games or gone to do other things. They should take them along with them from day one so that the principles automatically grow in them. When they get big, if they want to depart from that, then so be it; but you (parents) have already laid the foundation," said the Sunday school teacher, who also pointed out that in her childhood years, she and her siblings had to attend Sunday school morning and evening.

Tomlinson-Dussie wants all to put themselves in a position to hear the word of God, especially those persons who are not yet walking in the way of the Lord. She wants everyone to read the Bible and understand it for themselves and not just take whatever others say.

The mother of Dane-Andrew, Deyon-Andrea and Dacia, and the wife of Desmond Dussie, is beseeching Jamaicans, especially parents, to make a decision to serve God in spirit and in truth, so that they can be emulated by their children and be led to God.