HEN PASTOR Anthony Alexander, the Sri Lankan pastor who was wrongfully imprisoned in his homeland, gave his testimony during the General Conference (GC) session in Toronto, Deva Doss wasn't there. In fact, Doss caught very little of the GC proceedings. The math professor from Alberta, Canada, was busy giving Bible studies and working with a subculture of Toronto that is almost impenetrable by conventional evangelistic methods: Tamil immigrants from Sri Lanka.

Yet the majority of the 200,000 Sri Lankan immigrants have something in common with Pastor Alexander. Besides sharing a common language and culture, many of them know firsthand the kind of prison he was held in and the kinds of tortures commonly applied to Tamil prisoners.

Reaching Out
When Doss, a fellow Tamil and a math professor at Canadian University College (CaUC), heard about Alexander's testimony, he decided to contact him. Doss, along with Tamil CaUC student Johnson Washington, was spending a second summer in Toronto reaching out to the local Tamil community.

After successful outreach efforts in the summer of 1999, Doss and Washington continued to hold Bible studies by phone each week during the academic year with a Toronto Tamil group--an outgrowth of their work as self-supporting math tutors at a summer math clinic they had organized for Tamil youth.

Some of the phone Bible study contacts were at the stage at which a pastoral visit seemed to be the next step, and Alexander certainly had the credentials to make that visit. So during the General Conference session, at an informal meeting between Doss, the Washington brothers (Johnson and Homahan), Alexander, and other Sri Lankans with a passion for their people, the seeds of an alliance were planted. It's an alliance that has seen the first Tamil congregation in Canada become a reality, and the start of a new life for Anthony Alexander.

The Firstfruits
The Canadian Tamil outreach actually began at the Canadian University College campus church, in College Heights, Alberta, rather than in Toronto. Johnson Washington's brother Homahan, whom Doss describes as "a very dedicated person," determined to follow Christ wherever He might lead. A trilingual radio and TV announcer for the International Tamil Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto (which broadcasts worldwide) and a former Catholic, Homahan has turned down more than one lucrative job to pursue his mission of bringing Christ and Adventism to the Tamil people. He was baptized in January 2000 at the College Heights church.

Related Links Testimony Johnson Washington

There was no Adventist Tamil church in Toronto, and Homahan viewed CaUC--in far-off Alberta--as his spiritual home. One year later, on February 24, 2001, Doss and the two Washington brothers (Homahan was now an integral part of the ongoing Toronto outreach and the on-site contact in Toronto) saw another precious person from the Toronto Tamil community baptized at CaUC: Sister Janet Mariampillai, a Benedictine nun.

Mariampillai first heard Doss preach at the all-night Good Friday 2000 charismatic Catholic service in Toronto. But how had an Adventist math professor from Alberta found his way to the pulpit of a Toronto Catholic church on Good Friday? The story starts back in the classroom.

Coming Together
"I'm proud of Deva," said Errol Lawrence, chair of the Religious Studies Department at CaUC, at the curry potluck that followed Mariampillai's baptism. While sitting among the religious studies majors in Lawrence's evangelism class, Doss had talked to Lawrence on more than one occasion about his desire to reach his Tamil brothers and sisters in India with the good news. Doss also shared his dream with a recent Tamil immigrant from Sri Lanka, student Johnson Washington. "You don't have to go to India," Washington had responded. His Catholic brother was one of the vast Tamil community in Toronto. After much prayer the teacher-student team went to Toronto and set up a math tutorial center in the heart of Toronto's Tamil area. The Tamil community has historically seen education as extremely important. With the math clinic as their introduction to the community, Doss and Washington found opportunities to begin Bible studies, and Doss established himself in the Catholic charismatic community as a scientist (he had once been on staff at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) who could relate science to the Bible.

Before returning to CaUC in the fall, Doss was invited to preach at the charismatic group's all-night Good Friday vigil. It was at that meeting that Mariampillai, on leave from her convent in England, was in an audience of more than 500 people who heard the words that reawakened her hope in God. From 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. on that Good Friday, Doss preached, the Holy Spirit led, and Sister Janet sensed she needed to stay in contact with the strangers from Alberta. Because of the cultural stigma attached to leaving a religious order, Doss invited her to come to Alberta to continue her search for truth.

A Supportive Community
Living in the Doss home on the campus of CaUC, Sister Janet discovered a community that made all the difference in her search. She spoke with Chaplain Sabine Vatel and got more assistance with her Bible study. The Doss family treated her with the utmost kindness, and she began to find what she'd been looking for. "You can find God here," she told me. "I couldn't find Him in the convent, but I feel the joy I had in God returning."

After her baptism Mariampillai explained how important the CaUC environment was at that point in her journey back to God. "When I was a sister in the Catholic Church, people respected me because I wore my habit. But here [at CaUC]," she says, "I wore no habit-and people respected me because I was a person."

"This is heaven!" adds a beaming Homahan, who is the on-site person in Toronto. "Whenever I feel my batteries need to be recharged I come here for a couple weeks; then I go back, ready to work again."

The CaUC-Toronto missionary team-Doss, the Washington brothers, and Doss's wife, Carolyn, and daughter Cavitha-were happy for another reason on the day of Mariampillai's baptism. That same weekend the Ontario Conference voted to employ Anthony Alexander as a part-time pastor to look after the fledgling Toronto Tamil Seventh-day Adventist Church.

General Conference Intervention
Fearing that Alexander would again be imprisoned if he returned to Sri Lanka, the General Conference personnel who had worked diligently for his release persuaded him to stay in Toronto and seek refugee status. Taking their counsel, and being one to take the initiative, Alexander began to look for ways to work in his new community.

After the Washington brothers left for their work/mission trip to Europe (see sidebar), Doss met with Alexander. They shared their visions of ministry within the largely Hindu and refugee Tamil community of Toronto, and thus became friends and colaborers in this large city. "[Pastor Alexander] is doing a lot of follow-up work," says Doss. "He followed up the interests we gave him, and gave more Bible studies."

For his part, Alexander praises God for the blessings of friendship in Christ and the way that God has led in his life. Though not on any church payroll initially, through cooperation with Doss and cultivation of the contacts the CaUC-Toronto team made, Alexander was able to present the Ontario Conference with tithe from a potential Adventist Tamil congregation of 27 individuals (five of whom were baptized) in the fall of 2000. In February 2001 Alexander was made a half-time pastor of the new church, and he continues to cultivate interests with the same enthusiasm that helped him establish several Adventist congregations in Sri Lanka (the real reason, Doss feels, for Alexander's imprisonment in Sri Lanka).

"He's a very energetic person, very versatile and talented-a very dedicated person," observes Doss of Alexander's motivation and dynamism. "His heart is to work for the Tamil people. The future seems bright."

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Lynn Neumann McDowell wrote this article while serving as director of college relations at Canadian University College. She has now moved to the St. Helena (California) Hospital, where she is director of planned and major gifts.