Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

A pas­tor is de­fined as a Chris­t­ian leader re­spon­si­ble for guid­ing a con­gre­ga­tion, preach­ing, teach­ing, and pro­vid­ing spir­i­tu­al care. Kim­rol Ali, who preach­es at the Evan­gel Tem­ple in Barataria, is an ex­am­ple of this de­f­i­n­i­tion.

He re­cent­ly pub­lished his first book called ‘Know God’s Word’, which con­sists of a cross­word puz­zle and word search about the first book in the Bible, Gen­e­sis.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with the Sun­day Guardian, Ali ex­plained that each page in the book is based on a chap­ter of Gen­e­sis with the in­ten­tion be­ing “if a read­er can­not find the an­swer on a page, they will be forced to go in the Bible to search for the an­swer.”

He ad­mits it is a unique way to present a book, but the preach­er fur­ther ex­plained the rea­son was to find a fun way for peo­ple to un­der­stand vers­es in the Bible and the kind of sig­nif­i­cance those vers­es bring.

He cred­it­ed God for the idea. “I re­alised that some Bible com­men­taries out there can come across bor­ing, so the idea came about: why not do it dif­fer­ent­ly, in the form of this cross­word, and you are ask­ing the same ques­tions but with one word an­swers, and that just sparked some­thing in me, and I re­al­ly be­lieve this was a God idea,” he told the Sun­day Guardian.

With the book tak­ing three months to pub­lish, the 50-year-old re­flect­ed on the chal­lenges he faced while writ­ing it.

He said, “Some of the tri­als were com­ing up with in­ter­est­ing ways to get the ques­tions across, be­cause it is one thing to read the word, then an­oth­er way to try and ask ques­tions, and it is try­ing to get peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in an­swer­ing the ques­tion with one-word an­swers.”

Be­yond writ­ing the book, Ali en­coun­tered ad­di­tion­al ob­sta­cles when try­ing to get it edit­ed. He al­so faced fi­nan­cial con­straints, which led to print­ing few­er copies than in­tend­ed.

It’s a ma­jor achieve­ment for some­one who nev­er thought he would end up a preach­er. How­ev­er, he was des­tined to be­come a pas­tor, as he grew up in the home of a pas­tor, with his fa­ther be­ing Bish­op Has­ratt Ali.

How­ev­er, much like get­ting his book pub­lished, the road to him be­com­ing a pas­tor was one filled with ob­sta­cles.

“Al­though I grew up in a Chris­t­ian set­ting, there came a time where I reached a point in my life where I de­cid­ed that I want­ed to see what the world has to of­fer, and I left the church set­ting and I re­alised that out there has its ben­e­fits, but every ben­e­fit had its op­po­site ef­fect, which brings no true joy, which brought me back to the church and get se­ri­ous in the things with God.”

From there, Ali stat­ed that he went in­to the cor­po­rate world, work­ing in var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions, with his longest stint be­ing at Plipde­co at the Point Lisas Port as the man­ag­er of the har­bour un­til he left to work full-time in his min­istry.

Be­com­ing a pas­tor was some­thing that Ali ran from his whole life un­til one day, af­ter be­ing so in­volved in the min­istry, he de­cid­ed to give preach­ing a chance. He nev­er looked back. Since then, Ali said some of his fond­est mem­o­ries have come from work in his min­istry.

“We just last week had a prayer march in the streets of Barataria that was in­deed an awe­some time as we were wor­ship­ping and pray­ing on every street cor­ner, and as a re­sult of that, we saw a lot of peo­ple vis­it­ing church af­ter­wards, hav­ing at least two per­sons give their lives to God, and it tru­ly was an awe­some ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Ali has in­ten­tions of mak­ing a se­ries out of the books, with Gen­e­sis just be­ing the first of many as he is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the oth­er books of the Bible.

“I am now fin­ished with Gen­e­sis, and I am present­ly work­ing on oth­er books in the Bible, so at the end of the day, peo­ple are go­ing to have an en­cy­clopae­dia of the Bible to do cross­word puz­zles and word search.”

Pas­tor Ali’s mis­sion is to make learn­ing the word of God less of a chore. In­stead, he wants read­ers to be able to ful­ly en­gross them­selves in learn­ing the lessons of the Bible.