Salvation Testimony of Pastor Panir Paul Rajamany and the Role of Gideons

                                                          

 My name is Panir Selvam Rajamany. My Christian name is Paul. I was born in Ipoh in 1960. My parents were of the Hindu faith and taught their six children to worship idols from a young age. My late father was a medium, a person who goes into a trance and communicates with the gods. My mother was his assistant. Many times my later father would speak in a strange language and my mother would interpret what the gods were saying. All the boys in our home were sent to study at the Anglo-Chinese School in Ipoh. This was a Methodist mission school and the medium of instruction was in English. I joined Primary 1 with zero English but a year later, I learned the language. I became an avid reader and won prizes for borrowing the most number of books from the school library. We were a very poor family, my dad being a labourer with the Malayan Railways. As a result, I never had spare money and could never buy a book.

One day, a group of people came to my school and distributed little books. The books were brand new New Testaments. Only much later, I came to understand that this group of kind people were the Gideons. I was about tenyears old at this time. That Gideon Bible changed my life. I read it from cover to cover. From the four gospels, I got to know an amazing person called Jesus Christ. His teachings were amazing and his love touched my heart. I also read the Psalms and I was captivated by the words.

After my Form Five exam, called the Malaysian Certificate of Examination (MCE), I had a break of about three months. It was during this time that my classmate Simon Tan, invited me to attend his church. There I saw people lifting up their hands, singing and worshipping God. They had so much joy on their faces. I used to worship idols out of fear but these people worshipped their God out of love and adoration. I continued to attend this church week after week. My mother found out and threatened to throw me out of the home. I decided not to attend church.

However, God had other plans. I was offered a place to study engineering at University of Technology, Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. I jumped at the chance to leave home. In UTM, I joined the Varsity Christian Fellowship called the Ikatan Kristian UTM. There were about fifty of us, and we had a regular weekly meeting where we worshipped the Lord. During this time, a brother from the Navigators, visited me weekly and taught me bible study and discipled me. Our University bus would take us to Calvary Church, then in Damansara Heights each Sunday. On the watchnight worship service on 31 Dec 1980, the Lord gave me a vision. I saw my slum house in Ipoh with a flag flying on the roof. Someone was explaining to me that “this is the flag of Christ”. The camera seemed to zoom into the house and in the living room, I saw my mum reading a Bible. She had torn a Bible to pieces just a few months earlier. I continued to pray for her salvation. 

A few months later, I was on a term break in Ipoh. A friend told me that an evangelist from India will be preaching in the Town Hall in Tamil. I immediately went home and invited my mum. To my great surprise, she agreed to attend. Bro DGS Dhinakaran was preaching for the first time ever in Ipoh. He spoke about the love of God. When he invited those who wanted to receive Christ to come forward, my mum ran to the front and gave her heart to the Lord. The first thing she wanted was a Bible. I bought her a Tamil Bible. She read it from cover to cover in 3 months – just like the Lord had shown me in the vision. The Lord began to use her to share the good news and to pray for the sick. She experienced many miracles after coming to Christ. One day, I went back to  Ipoh and found my dad had been admitted to hospital. He was in a coma and the doctors told me he would not recover. He was 72 at that time. I had no Christian friends or pastors I could call upon. I put my faith in Mark 16:18 “……they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” I prayed for my father that he should not die without knowing Christ. Three days later he woke up, completely normal. He came back home andwas never ill again till he died. About three months after his miracle healing, he announced that he wanted to become a Christian. He was baptized and received Christ as Lord and Saviour.

From the time I graduated as an engineer, the Lord did many amazing miracles in my life. In 2014, I moved to Melbourne, Australia. I graduated with a Masters in Ministry from Harvest Bible College and served as a volunteer pastor with the refugee ministry. I ministered to Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. Later we pioneered a church among the migrants in Dandenong. We also started a outreach among the homeless people.

In 2019, we returned to Malaysia in obedience to a vision and a dream that the Lord gave. In 2020 the Lord opened the door for me to become the chairman of Rumah KIDS (www.rumahkids.com), a home for abandoned children. We currently have 40 children. In 2021, I was asked to join the pastoral team at Grace Assembly Klang in the English congregation. In 2024 I was appointed the interim Lead Pastor of the English congregation. God has transformed me from a sinner to a vessel impacting many for His glory and His Kingdom. I will always be grateful for the ministry of the Gideons. It was through that little pocket New Testament that I came to know about the love of Christ. I want every Gideon member to know that your ministry of sowing seeds of His Word, is so powerful. I am just one of the very few who came back to tell you how great your work is.

Thank you.

Panir Selvam Rajamany (Paul), Grace Assembly Klang