Preaching God’s message to all corners, Winston Campbell is a ‘Special Person’

Jun 24, 2012 News

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By Leon Suseran

We feature different kinds of people each week in this column and each and every one of them has their distinct special qualities. Our ‘Special Person’ this week has a flare for preaching the word of God; he is well respected and well- known around the religious circles in Guyana since he has travelled the length and breadth of this beautiful country, delivering his

power- packed sermons and messages. He gave up his job at the Rose Hall Estate after being ‘called’ to deliver divine messages. He left what he was doing to become a preacher whose skills would be perfected in the years to follow and whose life would never be the same again. At one time, he wanted to call it quits, but prayers are said to be powerful and prayers helped him to stay on through the narrow road.
Winston Edward Campbell was born on 25 November, 1929 to housewife, Arata Rebecca Campbell and farmer and labourer, William Bert Campbell at Gibraltar, Corentyne.
Sadly, when he was six years old, his mother passed away, leaving his father to shoulder much of the responsibilities in the home. Winston was one of six children in the home.
“I grew without a mother; I grew a little with my grandmother, a little with my stepmother and then myself.”
Losing his mom at quite a young age left young Winston to deal with the tragedy and it only sank into his head– young as he was–that she was indeed gone a few days after she was buried.
“She was a very slim person- a little brown skin, very quiet,” he recalled. “When she died, I was not sad or so at first, until after a day or two when I really, you know, missed a mother…then it took effect in me.”
He noted that the family pulled through during the tough times because “two years after her death, he [my father] got married and then he left home and was living at Bramsfield, working with Bookers’ Estate as a Ranch Manager and we were back home with my grandmother.”
Winston attended St. Columbia Scott’s School in Canje up to Form four.
He left school at the age of 13 years due to having to care for his sisters and he took up fishing. He had no other choice, he added.
As a young ‘country boy’, he recalled working in the farms with his grandmother and cousin.
Afterwards, his father took ill and “I had to take the responsibility to maintain the entire family and got my sisters married. I remained with my father.”     After his mother’s death, his elder brother left home and went away and so, young Winston had to take up several responsibilities such as working in the rice fields. For 36 cents a day he worked on the maintenance of the old Corentyne brick road at age 14 years. He then left and went to work at the Rose Hall Estate with one of the Overseers as House Messenger Boy after which he worked in the fields, loading punts until 1969. Afterwards, he became a contractor with the road project until he got married to Stella Amanda Thomas at age 18 on September 22, 1952. The union bore 12 children. However, one died in a truck accident at age 12 while another was stillborn. On July 25, 2002 Winston left his job thereafter to become a preacher.
And that began a new chapter of his life. He had already “accepted the Lord as my Saviour in 1962.”
In explaining how he made the huge leap of faith, Campbell recalled that his wife was very sick and he was spending all his money to get her better. “I had to stop plant rice, because I ran out of finance and then a preacher came up here, a missionary, Harry Dass, with another fella, Dennis Elliman, and they were stopping not too far from where I was living.”
At first he was very hesitant to attend their services even though he had been invited.  Although he attended the local village Anglican Church, Campbell was never the regular churchgoer. He sent his wife, though, to the missionaries’ church, “and she would come back and tell me what they would preach and what they would do; praying for people who were sick and so. She was prayed for and she felt the pain in her back disappear, so she invited me.”

He did go, out of curiosity, and he continued to attend. After praying and communicating deeply with the Divine Being, and going back home one night, he kept feeling the need to return for more and “I started to feel free in my spirit and I started to pray and praise God and felt nice.”
He was approached by the missionaries to become a preacher and that he did, after quitting the job he had.
He later acquired a land and a church was built, the Christian Global Network at Number 1 Road Corentyne.
“I continued the ministry unto this day and I think until I die…” He recalled how many lives he has touched over the years.
He would meet persons from all over, especially overseas, and they would remind him about the exciting crusades “and you prayed for me and I was healed”.
“God has been using me to work miracles, great signs and wonders. Many broken homes, I have ministered to the family and they have come back together, living together and made great progress too,” he added.
Brother Campbell, as he is famously called by the people in his community, is nationally known. He had preached at Siparuta along the Corentyne River, North West District, Sand Hills, Kwakwani, even Suriname, Trinidad, Canada, Venezuela and USA.
And when asked how he prepares his powerful messages….he said “prayer is the key”.
“Sometimes, you sit down and prepare your message– but sometimes when you go to preach– the Holy Spirit guides you and may not allow you to preach the message I prepared.”
He added that every area in which he has gone to preach “has different needs and the only person that knows the needs of the people of that community is God and he knows what message the man of God must preach.”
When reminded about the confusion that seems to exist around the world today and the societal breakdown and what effect the preaching of so many religious leaders has had on this,  Bro Winston noted that all are results of “the last days which are upon us.”
“The preaching is reaching the people …but in the last days, iniquity and wickedness will abound more and more, but the grace of God will abound too.”
Campbell does not get discouraged as a preacher in that regard. “I can’t get discouraged because the word [of God] has taught me that many will follow the broad road.”
Recalling challenges and difficulties he has had over the years, he spoke about falling sick and of deteriorating health. Traveling across the length and breadth of Guyana and in other countries, preaching and doing what he loves, can from time to time make him ignore his health “and God may be trying you to see where you are going to put your faith. When the sickness comes, you have to run to a doctor and this man and that man, but you have to put your faith and trust in God that he will heal you.” “Take him at his word, he will not fail you…maybe not today, not tomorrow, not next year but he wants to see how you are going to react [with illness].”
Brother Campbell feels a great amount of satisfaction in doing what he does. “I feel happy.” Had he not become a preacher, he noted, he would have remained working in the estate “but I would have died too, because what was in my mind and what I wanted to achieve, I wasn’t your ordinary guy…I always had in my mind that I wanted to be independent and achieve certain things”. After his parents’ death, he knew he wanted to go forward and had a plan to climb the ladder of life, “and did not want to be left down here to be a poor man…I always had a plan in my mind to go forward, even though I came off of school early and did not have an education, I said I must make the money.” But that ideology changed since he took up the task to leave the business- minded orientation behind to become a preacher.
He conducts church services every Sunday mornings and evenings, as well as Wednesdays.
He is also in high demand as he is invited to other churches on many occasions to preach his sermons and minister to the people. “There’s a church in New Amsterdam and they are begging me to go every Wednesday and I did go and they want me to go back and they asking me, ‘Brother Campbell, when are you coming back?”
So what about his preaching that attracts the masses? “The gift of the man makes way for the man”, was his biblical reply. “That people always desire you.”
One of his sons is also a preacher, so it seems to have been running in the family. How did he nurture the special gift of preaching over the years? His response was “practice and a lot of praying”. “The Bible says, cease not to pray….so you got to be prayerful in everything you do– and fasting, that is the key– if you can’t pray and fast, you cannot do the work of God.”
At 83, Campbell plans to continue preaching the wise words “until there is life in me.”
Health-wise, he is “okay”. He rears chickens in his spare time and rides his vintage bicycle. He keeps himself very active. He also farms in his garden, planting cassava, bananas and vegetables.
When asked what were a few good words for Guyanese and other readers out there from a preacher’s standpoint, our ‘Special Person’ said, “Have faith in God…no matter how things may seem hard to you, you have to continue putting your trust in God– he will turn your darkness into light, your sorrows into joy, all you have to do is trust him and put your confidence in him and he will never fail you and that is what I try to encourage every man, every woman, whether what race or creed you may be.”

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