About The Founder

My name is Poovelingam Ramasamy Solomon. My name denotes that I come from a Hindu background. In 1960, when I was 18 years old, I read the Old Testament books Ecclesiastes and Proverbs authored by King Solomon and thus began my spiritual journey. I changed my name to Solomon and started a personal relationship with Christ. Many Hindu friends wanted to know why I became a Christian, assuming that I changed my religion for the sake of marriage.  At the time, I would have thought the same, as it has been a rule in many Christian churches in India that a Christian cannot marry a Hindu until he or she converts to Christianity.  However, in my case this was not true. I married my wife nine years after I became a follower of Christ.  

In the Beginning 

I was born in 1942 and brought up in a traditional Hindu family steeped in traditions, which molded my mind and early life around the Hindu culture.  My father was the trustee and founder of the PathiraKali Amman temple in my town of Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu. I attended a private Hindu school until eighth grade. I was a member of the Hindu Bhajan (singing songs to Hindu deity) group at the school and participated in Bhajan choir in the local temple during the forty-day festival in the winter.  

My house was located near the Church of South India.  I grew up with Christian friends who lived in my neighborhood and I watched Christians going to Church every Sunday carrying the Bible in their hands. Despite closeness to friends of the Christian faith, as a Hindu, I had a negative attitude toward Christians and their religion. The Christian God Jesus was foreign to me.

A Journey to Find a Cure

I was following along the path of my life when I suddenly developed epilepsy seizures at the age of fifteen. These seizures were debilitating, causing me to bite my tongue and spend several hours unconscious. For three years, every six months, I would suffer attacks. I would never know when the next attack would come. The unknown timing of my attacks forced me to quit school and look for work to support my family.  I worked in several different stores for three years, but could not take on many jobs due to my illness.  Life became very bitter to me and I suffered a lot, I especially missed my teenage life and time with my family.

My parents, being Hindus, searched for remedies as suggested by their Hindu relatives and friends.They did their best to find someone to heal me. Originally, they tried doctors and later other means. First, they consulted an Astrologer, who said that I was under the influence of a bad planet.  He suggested that for healing, I needed to worship nine planetary gods every Friday, for three months. After three months of worship, I was not healed.  Next, my father consulted a spirit medium. The medium said that I was attacked by an evil spirit and in order to be released from the spirit, I had to cut up a chicken at midnight and perform a special ritual. I was too scared to try and subsequently, I was not healed.  Next, my family consulted an herbalist who gave me a special oil made from herbs. The herbalist suggested that I apply the oil to my head before each bath. I followed his instructions but I was not healed.  

In the midst of the search for a cure, I had a particularly bad episode. One night around midnight I had a seizure. My father admitted me to the local government hospital for treatment. There I was given an injection in my thigh to help control the seizure, unfortunately the pharmacist administered the wrong medicine which caused a serious infection in my thigh. As a result, I spent four months in the hospital recovering. Once I recovered, the search for my cure continued and my father took me to a village priest in the nearby village of Cholapuram. The priest claimed to have the power to speak with the goddess Kali who has the power to heal people from various illnesses.  He sat before the statue of the goddess and spoke to it.  While I could hear him speaking and see him listening, I never heard anything from the statue.  He told us that I was suffering from a nervous disorder.  We were immediately shocked because we never told him what I was suffering from.  My father immediately told him about the nature of my sickness and requested that the priest speak to the goddess for a cure.  He told us that I had to fast for forty days and pierce my tongue with a vale (big needle). I was very scared and asked the priest to bargain with the goddess for a different healing treatment.  The new treatment I was given was that I would come to worship the goddess every Friday for three months. However, I never followed the treatment and was not healed.  

Then came the final straw.  A village exorcist from the local Catholic Church told my father that I had been possessed by three evil spirits and that he had the power to chase them all out.  I just could not believe that I was possessed by evil spirits.  The exorcist came to our home and started the ceremony.  He laid his hand on my head and rolled it several times.  I waited to see how the spirit that took possession of me would react, but nothing happened.  I watched as he lit a camphor, put it into a tumbler of water, where it burned and floated.  Once it was burning and floating, he covered the tumbler with his hand and I saw water shoot out.  He covered it tight and took it outside of our compound to the street.  My mother told me that he had caught the spirits and took them out. When he came back to the house and put his hand on my mother to bless her, she began to scream. The exorcist shouted at the spirit and commanded the spirit to leave my mother and she calmed down. My mother remembered nothing of her episode and I was still not healed. In my search for healing from epilepsy, there seemed to exist no remedy from my Hindu tradition.   

Faith in Christ and Healing

After going through many similar experiences, a woman who was considered a secret Christian told me, “Thambi, (younger brother), you tried many things, why don’t you try Jesus”.  She suggested that I attend the Christian meetings that were held near my house and asked the pastors to pray for healing.  I was skeptical but I said I would go out of respect for her. Although I had no intention of going, her words stayed with me and I contemplated going to this Christian meeting despite my negative view of Christians and their god.  After a week hiding from my Hindu friends and family, I went and sat through the meeting.  After the meeting, I asked Pastor Gurubatham to pray for me.  He prayed and gave me a Bible to read at home.

I took the Bible home and started to read.  I spent eight hours a day reading, and attended services in the evenings for three months. As I read the Old Testament, I deeply felt that I was a sinner.  I realized that many things I was doing were in opposition to God’s moral laws.  I started to feel guilt for my sins.  As I read the Gospels, I came to understand for the first time in my life, that God was truly a loving God.  I was very impressed by Jesus’ teachings of love, forgiveness, peace, grace, kindness and compassion.  His life of service and sacrifice on the cross deeply touched my heart. I eventually surrendered my heart to Him and accepted Him as my Lord, Guru and divine Savior who could heal me from epilepsy.  

After six months of attending the local Seventh-day Adventist Church, I was secretly baptized in June 1961, in a river close to Sattur. 

I was completely convinced that after baptism I would be completely healed.  Instead, a few weeks after my baptism, I had another seizure.  I was devastated.  I fell into a deep depression which spiraled into feelings of hopelessness.  I had no money, no job, and I hated my life. In my darkest hours, I prayed to God to take my life, as I did not have the courage to take my own.  Even my family, who had supported me so far, gave up on me.  My mother told me about her brother Ganesh (named after the god Pilliar) who had also suffered from the same illness. She told me that he went to the temple, fasted, prayed to the god Ganesh, and eventually died there. I prepared myself to meet the same destiny.  

A New Life

During this period of crisis, I sought guidance from SDA Pastor Wessel for my depression. He encouraged me to claim God’s promises. He spoke to me of Jesus healing the leper and the servant of the centurion.  He read to me Matthew 8:16-17: “Jesus took our infirmities and carried our diseases”.  I took a leap of faith and prayed to Jesus. I claimed His promises and askedHim to heal me.  As I claimed His promises, I also promised that if He would heal me, I would dedicate the rest of my life to His mission. In particular, I promised to lead the Hindus to Jesus. I would share His healing power, His promises of forgiveness from sin, and His peace and hope for a better future now and in the hereafter. After I made this commitment, I was healed of my epilepsy. After my promise, I felt a strong conviction that I was called by Jesus to continue His mission in India.

Suddenly, I was facing a life full of new hope and new challenges in fulfilling my commitment to Jesus.  At nineteen years old, I went back to finish high school and prepared to go to Pune to study in the SDA college. I wanted to receive training and become a minister in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. With very little money and a few articles of clothing, I left my town and the support of my family. I faithfully began my long journey into an unknown world with lots of hope and aspirations.  Being a Hindu convert and having lived nearly three years with faithful SDA Christians in my hometown, I arrived at a place that was totally foreign to me and practiced Christianity in a different way. In the beginning, I was very upset. I was discouraged and disillusioned by the foreignness of this Christianity. I was ready to quit and just go back home. It was during this time of inner struggle that a Tamil teacher Samuelraj Pakkianathan said, “Are you going to be a quitter?  This is not the right place for people like you coming from a Hindu background.  We need to have a Christian Ashram in India to train people who come from Hindu backgrounds”. Those two expressions that he mentioned, “not to be a quitter” and “a need for Christian Ashram” planted a seed in my mind and bore a new dream to start a Christian ashram to carry on the mission of Christ.  

I spent six years studying theology in a Seventh-day- Adventist Bible College.  On June 5, 1969, I married my wife Margaret and was blessed with a son Nihal on August 17, 1971. After graduating in March 1970, I served three years as an SDA minister in Coimbatore. Being a paid minister, I realized that I could not realize my vision of bringing the knowledge of Christ to the Hindu people and decided to go to graduate school and study Philosophy. I joined the University of Pune, in June 1973 and received M. A. in philosophy in June 1975. I then joined Spicer Memorial College as the head of the department of philosophy for two years.  

A New Paradigm Shift

After studying philosophy, especially the philosophy of existentialism, my mind shifted from theological issues to existential issues. My mission became not just sharing Jesus with Hindus but also dealing with the existential issues related to human life suffering here and now.  And full circle, I came back to the Jesus I personally experienced in 1960 and 1961.  

On March 1, 1977, Margaret and I were blessed with another son Naveenraj.  I migrated to the United States in August 1977, where my wife and children joined me in March 1978. There I pursued Biblical studies and Missiology at several different seminaries:

• Theological Seminary at Andrews University in Berrien Springs

• Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids;

• Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena.

I served as a mental health worker for ten years in Grand Rapids and as an adjunct professor at the Andrews Theological Seminary for three years during 1983 to 1999. I always longed to become a self-supporting missionary like Apostle Paul and I prayed about it for many years.  In 1990, God heard my prayer and I was able to start the Karunaiyananthar Ashram in India. 

I have come a long way on my spiritual journey and have made several paradigm shifts to reach my goals and become who I am today. I no longer suffer from a shattered identity or define myself within the boundaries of any religion.  I am just a simple Indian follower of Jesus. I shifted my focus from Christianity to the dharma of Jesus through the words of Christ found in the four Gospels. The dharma of Jesus can bring peace in times of troubles and guide us to meet new challenges.  Mankind is presently divided on the basis of race, color, language, religion, ethnicity and ideologies. However, in Christ there is one God father/mother of all, one people with no divisions, and one world with no boundaries.