A New Direction
On March 21st, 1999 a very important question was asked in front of hundreds of Doxa attenders: Sarah, I love you with all my heart. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me? The answer was a cute Yes followed by a lot of screaming from the crowd. Sarah & I had started dating 7 weeks earlier. Yes, 7 weeks. At the 5 week mark, I met with her dad and asked for her hand in marriage to which he responded I would be proud to have you as my son. He had questions, and I had questions. I wanted to know if he would still want me as his son-in-law if there hadn't been a Doxa and if he cared that I was born in India and that Sarah had a Scottish-Russian background. He wanted to know why I loved his daughter and that I would be committed to her for life.
Sarah and I fell crazily in love. We were together all the time for those 7 weeks except when I was in Mexico during week 7. It was a good thing that she down-played her attendance at Doxa because I had decided to never date anyone who attended the service. I was worried that they may have a false impression of me; you know, the guy on stage who writes these songs and says all these great things. I needed to be with someone who saw me for who I really was. You'd have to ask Sarah who that is... I'm sure she knows by now.
(Vijay singing "My Gift" before proposing, 1999)
The thing that so impressed me about Sarah was her respect and love for her parents, the amazing qualities of her mother, and the godly heritage she had through her Opa & Omi. Opa and Omi loved the Lord and the whole world knew it; well, anyone who met them. How did they know it? One quick clue was the fact that Omi would hand you a little mini-Bible and tell you that you could read the prayer on page 8 if you wanted to receive Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.
I had actually met Omi and Sarah's mother at Doxa long before I had ever met Sarah. They came up after the service to wait to talk with me, and Omi had brought a variety of mini-Bibles in a variety of Indian languages for me. It was so cute and wonderful at the same time. Sarah's mother remembered me from a speech I had given at the Christian high school I had attended. I was the newly elected Student Body President at MEI and gave a speech at the Opening Ceremonies in the fall of 1990. Sarah's mother had thought to herself that it was wonderful that this boy from India had been saved and was now leading the students to the Lord.
The truth of the matter is that I come from a Christian heritage in India. My father, David James Manuel, is a pastor and his father, James Manuel, was a pastor. My mother's father also was a pastor as was his father. Apparently we were saved a few hundred years ago when missionaries visited our part of the country. India now has a strong Christian population which is equal to the Sikh population in India of around 35 million people, or roughly 3.5% of the population. Interestingly, there are more Mennonite Brethren in India than in Canada. Having said that, there is probably more of everything in India than anywhere else, given that the country has a population of over 1 billion.
It helped that I was 25 going on 26 and had a career as a teacher. This was actually my paying job; Doxa was simply my passion. For Sarah's parents, I was a godly young man who was living for the Lord and came from a good Christian family. They had heard my father preach at their church along with my various challenges at Doxa and thus could find comfort in our short time of dating and engagement. It was a little more difficult for my parents. They had been praying that God would protect me from, well, a lot of things. One of those things would be girls. They wanted me to find the one the Lord had for me without having to meet any of the other girls, I think. Well, it didn't quite happen that way, but I did find her.
I'll never forget the first time Sarah met my dad (Pops). It was Valentine's Day, and the first thing Sarah said to him was Would you like a kiss? Pops burst into laughter when Sarah held out a Hershey's Kiss chocolate and gave her a hug. I think he loved her from that moment on. My mother was hesitant at first, but was so excited to see the ring I had chosen on the Sunday of the proposal. She blessed me and promised to love Sarah as her daughter. My mother's opinions on the things of life are very important to me because she has great wisdom and because she is undyingly in my corner. I'm quite certain that there isn't another person who has attended more Doxa services. Faithfully she sat in the balcony during the times it was empty through to the times it was bouncing so much from people dancing and praising that Central Heights brought in an engineer to evaluate its sturdiness. In a very short time, Sarah would be loved by my mother as if she were her own daughter.
(Vijay proposes to Sarah Nicholson at Doxa, March 21, 1999)
The night of the engagement was quite something. We had just returned from Mexico on Saturday and found the church filled with eager worshipers on Sunday night. Following a full worship set and message, I introduced Sarah Nicholson who was to sing with me on stage. She never sang. As she walked onto the stage, I left and the boys of the band and our new sound man, Kevin Fedrau, moved monitors, mics, and guitars out of the way as Dan played some romantic music on the acoustic guitar. They then began dropping carnations around her and eventually gave her a white rose as they whispered something in her ear and left. The crowd was, of course, completely baffled.
At this point, with Sarah sitting on a stool holding a microphone, the lights went out and two spot lights hit the stage: one on Sarah and one on the piano. I came out holding a red rose, which I laid on the piano, and sang a song I had written entitled: My Gift. The lyrics included the following line: She must be a gift from You, Nothing else could be this true, I've never known love in this way before, She must be a gift from You. As the song concluded and I walked across the stage and got on one knee, Sarah now knew what was going on as did the rest of the crowd. Well, I know the girls knew from the deafening collective scream coming from each female in the crowd. Immediately following the question and answer, Sarah & I dashed out of the building to a running car and drove to my parents home for the after-party. Wow.
A new direction in life and ministry had been set for me. I now had a family that I needed to invest in, and I knew that Doxa's days were numbered. Doxa wouldn't be able to continue without me as Doxa because of the close connection to me in the songs and the weekly message. The call on Doxa would need to be passed on to the dozens of communities represented in the crowd weekly.
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The Doxa Story // Beginnings / Growth / Major Moves / Events / A New Direction / Take It To The Streets / A Year Off / Doxa Begins Again / More Changes
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