A service with Ananda Dean in mind
RICHARD Dean’s Whitehall Avenue home in St Andrew was heavy with despair.
His daughter, 11-year-old Ananda Dean, had been missing for days and the worried family longed for a word on her whereabouts.
Pastor Liston Aiken – in what had become more than a heavenly duty those days – had been praying with the grief-stricken family all evening. He was just about to steer another bout of prayers to God when the telephone rang.
Suddenly, the atmosphere inside the house changed. Prayers and crying morphed into ‘shh’s’ as everyone’s attention turned to the ringing cellular phone. Dean rushed outside to answer.
But the person on the other end had no information on his daughter’s location. It was just another prankster, heartlessly requesting money for information about young Ananda’s whereabouts.
When Dean returned, his expression was enough to sink spirits. And the family, as if instinctively knowing what happened, cried harder than before.
Such prank calls were frequent in the month-long search for Ananda, whose decomposed body was found in Belvedere bushes in St Andrew. The coldness of those who make such calls is hard to fathom, even by elder men of the cloth.
“It was just so painful for me to see that people could not understand that these persons (family) were grieving,” said Pastor Aiken, a child of the community, and lead pastor at the nearby Good Tidings Mennonite Church on Whitehall Avenue.
“These persons took it to another level; they definitely wanted to add more pain to the family’s grief. They were just heartless and only worsened the wild-goose chase,” he said.
Aiken could not give a number, but said that most of the prank calls went to Dean’s father and aunt. He sighed before continuing: “Sometimes you see the prank calls come in and they step outside to answer it. Then you realise that it’s a prank call and everybody start crying, the cousins, and the children. That was very painful.”
Such occurrences make his job as comforter harder, said Aiken. On one hand, for the comfort of the relatives, he had to be asking God to return Ananda safely, but on the other, he said, he knew that the reality may be different, and in those cases he prayed that God’s will be done.
Last Sunday, the church used a special service to commemorate five years since Ananda was abducted and killed. There, persons reflected on what the “bubbly” child’s teenage life would have been had she not been savagely murdered. Some persons cried openly.
The Ananda Dean killing is probably the biggest community support initiative that the Good Tidings Mennonite Church has had to undertake since it opened its doors in 1955. The many peace walks, mediation between the community and police, visits to the sick and elderly and youth counselling sessions pale in comparison to the assistance offered during the Ananda Dean saga, Aiken would agree.
“We are a church of care. We are a peace church. We have a genuine, caring congregation, and we care about all aspects of your life,” said Aiken, who himself was subject to the care that he spoke of.
In 1993, Aiken and his wife of 25 years lost their first child who was stillborn. Prior examinations had revealed that the child might have been born deformed, but everyone in the congregation was still praying for the best.
“Up until my wife was going to the church, members of the congregation were praying for us. They even set up candle-light vigils outside the hospital just to show their support, and have been with us ever since,” he said. “And that kind of support is common at our church. We visit the sick, the shut-in and keep in contact with everyone.”
The church has an average of about 300 persons worshipping on Sundays. There is an active feeding programme, which caters to over 70 residents, each Thursday. The church also funds an annual Christmas treat, to which over 500 people attend each year, and offers scholarships to high school students in the community.