Phanuel Daughter of a Prophet

By Karen Minott

"For many weeks after the accident, the evening remained in Phanuel's mind—the surprise, the shock, the blood, and the loss. Her mind was seized by the very smell and feel of the day and would replay it in an unending loop—the unexpected jolt, the warm breath of the people thrown against her, their perspiring bodies blocking her exit, the swarming, wailing, confused crowd outside, and the bloody slaughterhouse feel. She was so very grateful but had many questions. Why had the Lord chosen her that day to live and not the deacon or the unfortunate others?" Phanuel: Daughter of a Prophet chronicles the amazing life of Phanuel Marrett, a Jamaican missionary, teacher, prophetess, and evangelist. In a biography that reads more like fiction, with its dramatic action and surprising twists, we follow Phanuel from her early days as a humble farmer's daughter through her dynamic life as a servant of the Lord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684562640

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Phanuel

Daughter of a Prophet

A Biography

Karen Minott

Copyright © 2019 Easton Marrett

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-68456-262-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68456-264-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

The book is dedicated to Phanuel’s late husband, Randolph Marrett, and is in memoriam to Phanuel’s late sister, Gwendolyn Smith, and her late brother, Rupert Wisdom.

The book is dedicated to my loving mother, Hyacinth Minott, and is in memoriam to my late father, Herbert Minott.

Stand when you are tempted to go down.

—Phanuel Marrett

Preface

I had the pleasure of meeting Phanuel Marrett over ten years ago when one of her sons introduced us. From the very first meeting, I was thoroughly charmed and greatly intrigued. She was nearly eighty by then and was a sweet, caring, and genteel woman who, despite her modesty, was in possession of a remarkable spiritual depth. Godly insight, spiritual wisdom, and stories of miraculous events fell like many pearls from her lips. She was a powerhouse for God, in other words.

When the opportunity came to write her story, I could not have been more honored. From the very beginning, this project has been a labor of love. Like Phanuel, I am Jamaican, and Phanuel and her husband, Randolph, were people who were very familiar to me. They came from a world not unlike my parents’ world, they had many of the same experiences that my parents did, and their lives were shaped by many of the same larger trends and forces. For example, my parents, like the Marretts, were born in Jamaica during the 1920s and early 1930s. They spent their childhoods and first part of their adulthoods there, coming to America as fully formed individuals in their thirties and forties, ready to work. They, too, benefited from the cornucopia of opportunity unleashed by the liberalization of American immigration policies in the late 1960s. For me, I loved Phanuel and Randolph for themselves, but in a very real sense, I was loving my own wonderful parents through them.

With a heart filled with gratitude, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all who helped create this project: first, Phanuel and Randolph, and all the hours of interviewing to which these two lovely people submitted themselves; second, the numerous family members who, without their memories and input, the project would never have come alive; third, Easton, Phanuel and Randolph’s son, without whose vision and persistence, the project never would have been initiated or completed; and fourth and most importantly, the Lord—the creator and sustainer of all life.

Phanuel: Daughter of a Prophet is a story of an amazing life in service to God, family, and community. Phanuel has been a missionary, prophet, teacher, and evangelist extraordinaire. May God continue to bless her and give her many more years.

Karen A. Minott

Master of Theological Studies

Harvard University

Part I

Chapter 1

Coming of Age

She walked swiftly along the road, running a bit, then slowing down, then moving quickly again. She felt a bit of pressure in her breast, but not too much, as she was so fit. So despite the heavier breathing, she moved forward at the same pace. She was worried as she had recently turned fifteen and had missed many days of school. And in her school system, these were two very big problems. The girl was concerned that she would not be able to return, and the girl loved school.

If she had glanced around, instead of moving so myopically forward, she would have noticed the wonderful hills on both sides of the road—verdant and undulating in the early morning sun. And perhaps she would have smelled the saltiness and the marvelous stink of the sea air, if the wind had been blowing in her direction. She, of course, would have noticed the houses on both sides of the road. All of them were modest dwellings and some of them humble shacks. She would have noticed the shop on her right or left and the general early morning activities of her farming community coming to life.

The girl, Phanuel Wisdom, was on her way to meet her teacher. Her school was a modest walk away, and she was a good student. She knew she was bright and others would agree. She did not hate being a farmer’s daughter nor anything about her farming life, but she did not see farming in her future, and she needed school as the best guarantee that she would have the choices a good education provided. She knew the school rules regarding absences, but she hoped for the best.

Phanuel, she heard even before she entered the schoolyard. She was lost in a daydream where she had entered the schoolyard, gone to her classroom and was speaking with her teacher. But when she glanced up from her reverie, before her, there was a classmate walking toward her.

Phanuel, the friend said, "dem call yu name yesterday. Yu de ’pon the age-out list."

It was an official fact, then. She could no longer attend school. She had aged out of the system—fifteen being the age when students without inclination, aptitude, or means were cut. Phanuel’s problem was means and nothing more. Her family simply did not have enough money—they were poor. Phanuel and her ambitions were, therefore, now on their own. It was 1941, and a world war was on. Most problematically, she was poor, a girl, and above all, black.

Phanuel was like many black Jamaican children in the colonial era. Those in authority viewed them and their education in a certain light. The goal was simply to make these the sons and daughters of former slaves sufficiently literate to carry out their future roles as agricultural workers. There was not much more. Some of the mixed-race children who sat higher within the color-class social system that existed in Jamaica were better educated, though not by much. All the children existed in a two-tiered educational system where primary school—considered school up to the eighth grade—was subsidized by the government, but secondary schools were nearly all private and required money to attend. By 1943, only two years after Phanuel aged out of the system, only 1 percent of black Jamaicans and 9 percent of mixed-race Jamaicans actually attended secondary school.¹ So sadly, Phanuel’s predicament was, despite the devastation it caused her, quite normal.

The year 1941 was near the end of the approximately three-hundred-year colonial rule of Great Britain in Jamaica. Brighter days for children like Phanuel were not far off, but by 1941, independence from Britain was about twenty years away. Just three years later, in 1944, with limited self-government that eventually culminated in independence in 1962, the country began to make greater investments in education. By the 1960s, scholarship became available to bright children from the black social classes for free university education at the University of the West Indies, the regional university established also in the 1960s. With Michael Manley’s democratic socialist experiment of the 1970s came free education, even for those attending secondary school. These developments, however, were decades off. And it provided no help to Phanuel who, in some sense, was born two decades too