“You Can Apply the Gospel to Every Aspect of Life”
Taramatie Ragoonath Kotiah
Taramatie Ragoonath Kotiah was born in Chickland Village, Carapichaima, in Freeport. She grew up in a Hindu home but also read the Bible. When she encountered the Book of Mormon as a grown woman living in Tacarigua, she found it “opened up things [she] didn’t know before.” On August 13, 1995, Taramatie was baptized. Her husband, Curtis, was baptized a month later.
At that time, Taramatie had a five-year-old daughter, but she had gone through a difficult pregnancy. She had experienced multiple miscarriages and was told by a doctor she should not have more children. The blessing Taramatie received at confirmation mentioned her “children,” which she thought was unrealistic. Then she found out she was pregnant. She was going to the doctor’s office to seek an abortion when a thought arose: “You just made a promise with Heavenly Father, you need to obey that promise.” She went home and told her husband, “I’m not going to have an abortion. We’re going to have this child.” In April 1996, she gave birth to a healthy son. In 1997, she gave birth to a second son. “I do know the blessings of the priesthood,” Taramatie said.
As a new convert, Taramatie heard a quote from Church President Gordon B. Hinckley that made a deep impression: “The key out of poverty is through education.” In the midst of “some struggles,” she remembers, “I decided to go sign up for school to get a better education, so I can find a better job to help myself and my family living conditions.”
During her struggles, Taramatie sometimes found it hard to believe Jesus Christ cared about her as an individual. “I’d question that,” she remembered. “I’d ask, ‘Jesus, do you really know me?’ And every time I’d asked that question in my heart, I’d feel a sense of comfort: ‘I know what you’re going through, because I’ve gone through it for you.’”
Taramatie and her husband served faithfully in the Church. While mothering her children and earning her university degree in business management, she also served as Young Women president. “Because I learned how to plan activities in church, I did event planning in college, and I aced the event planning course,” she said.
Since 2005, Taramatie has worked in the Church office in Port of Spain, where she has used her skills to help guide Church operations in a Caribbean context. “As time went by, the work organization started to localize things and realized that what works in Salt Lake may just not work in the Caribbean,” she said. “That has been a great game changer in the work environment.” Taramatie says that her career with the Church “has taught me the practical part of the gospel, where you can apply the gospel to every aspect of life.”
To “have Jesus Christ in my life,” she said, has made all the difference. “It allows us to persevere.”