I met up with this extraordinary 43-year-old man recently in Seoul, South Korea, while he was attending the Manmin Joong-ang church’s 24th anniversary celebrations and the first anniversary of the Global Christian Network, and he agreed to tell his moving story.

Uthayakumar Gerard began by introducing himself. “I have lived in France now for the past twenty-three years. I am married and we have two boys and two girls.

“I am now running Holy God TV which started one-and-a-half years ago. It’s the first twenty-four Christian TV in France broadcasting in both Tamil, French and English.”

Gerard said that he first arrived in France in 1983 after fleeing his country following the killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in an ambush by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that had been formed as tensions increased in Tamil-dominated areas of the north and east of the country. The killings sparking anti-Tamil riots leading to the deaths of an estimated several hundred Tamils.

But his escape from the violence of Sri Lanka to Paris, France, turned into a nightmare for him as a seventeen-year-old.

“I stayed on the streets of Paris without a home for more than three years,” he said. “At that time there was not a lot of Tamils who wanted to accept me into their households, so I slept on the streets without anybody to help me.”

I asked him how he had survived the freezing winters of Paris during that period.

“It was very difficult,” he said, “but there were also a lot of French people also living on the streets, so I was not alone.”

Gerard said that his life began to change when a social worker who introduced him to a Catholic priest. “His name was Gerard and he picked me up from the street one day and gave me a room and food and everything. After that, when I decided to stay on in France, I changed my surname to Gerard because this man literarily saved my life.”

As he finally managed to get on his feet, Uthayakumar Gerard said that he became intrigued with the Roman Catholic faith and was able to study in a French seminary.

“I studied to become a priest,” he continued, “but I was not born-again at that time.”

He said that he studied for seven years at a theological university and also worked in a hotel and was able to become fluent in French.

However, in 1999, Gerard decided to visit India to see his family who were now living there.

“While I was walking on the street in Chennai (Madras) one day, I saw a man who began proclaiming Jesus Christ to me and he told me that I needed to be saved,” said Gerard. “I then went to a church in Chennai and there, I became a born-again Christian. I stayed one year in India and while I was there, a pastor prophesied over me and told me that Christ had given me an extraordinary call to go back to France to do a work there.

“So I returned, but when I got back to France, I couldn’t find any evangelical church to attend. After a year of searching I managed to find one small evangelical church and so I joined it and became a member and stayed there for several years. During that time, I got married. My parents chose my wife.”

Gerard said that eventually he began to pray about starting a Christian radio station, but when he shared the idea with friends, they just laughed at him and told him to “keep on praying”.

He went on to say, “So after the seven years, I started a church with just three members. We had a lot of problems in the area where I planted the church. There were a lot of Tamil and Sri Lankan and Indian people living there but nobody to look after them spiritually.

“Then we had the opportunity do an half-hour program on television and so we produced it. All of a sudden, I got a phone call from Norway from one Tamil Hindu family who had been experiencing many problems. They said they had been watching the program and, as a result, all seven members of that family were saved.”

After that encouragement, he said that he began producing six hours of programs, and he then began praying that he could produce programming for 24 hours a day.

Gerard was able to get the funding for the programming by selling three homes and a shop that he had acquired and eventually was able to launch Holy God TV on July 7, 2005.

“We have fifty percent our programs all in Tamil and other fifty percent we have in English and French. We have a lot of French people in our audience because this is the only evangelical Christian channel in the country.”

I asked him looking back, if he felt that his time as a homeless person had helped him with his new television ministry.

“When I was in Sri Lanka, I had never known what it was like to be hungry or poor,” he said. “But Jesus Christ wanted to do something here in France and He prepares each and everybody for His service. So I think that He permitted me to be to be in the streets to meet Him and then do a great job for His Kingdom.”

Gerard added, “We need lot of prayer support at this time. So I ask all the people to please kindly pray for personally for my family and for our TV ministry and our church.”

Uthayakumar Gerard can be contacted by e-mail at: holygod_tv@hotmail.fr and his website is: http://www.holygod.tv.

Note: I’d like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

Note note: An MP3 audio file of this interview is available for broadcast on request to Dan Wooding at danjuma1@aol.com.