Roger Headland: American South Asian
Ajith and Nelun Fernando
25th February 2010
Dear Roger,
I praise God and rejoice with many who join you in wishing you a happy seventy-fifth birthday. May the Lord continue to use you to further the cause of his kingdom, especially in South Asia.
God has used you to birth so many wonderful things in South Asia. Books, magazines, journals, institutes, fellowships, I guess the list goes on an on.
However, to me, Roger Hedland is remembered as the person who helped get my first book printed. I completed my ThM Thesis at the Fuller School of Theology in 1976. The thesis was much longer than what was required for a Masters degree, but I got permission to write an extra long thesis because I wanted it to be published. I sent if from place to place, and no one was interested. Then came a providential occurrence when Dr Arthur Glasser showed it to you. And you decided to help get it printed. A Universal Homecoming? was released by ELS in 1983—seven years after I had finished writing it.
I have now written 15 books. Almost no one remembers The Universal Homecoming? today. But to me it will always be my literary firstborn. This is what got me started as a writer. And it also became the base of another more popular book Crucial Questions about Hell that was released in 1991 and translated into five other languages.
So Roger, I could never forget you! I could never stop thanking God for you.
Have a blessed day,
Your fellow servant of Jesus and the church in Asia,
Ajith Fernando.