Lionel Muthiah's first experience of North Dakota was not promising.

He'd come to Nashville, Tenn., from Malaya on a United Methodist Church scholarship. There, he'd met a girl.

In December 1958, he got off the train in Mandan at 3 a.m. to meet Marion Unkenholz's parents.

"I had cold feet in more ways than one,"he said.

Then the car had a flat south of Mandan. As Muthiah, coming from the tropics, looked at the high furrow of snow along the road, he thought, "Where are the mountains? Where are the trees?"

He thought, "There's no way Iwould live in North Dakota."

Marion and Lionel were married in 1959. Initially, they returned to Malaya for five years, where their twin daughters were born. But when the British withdrew from the region, Lionel saw opportunities shrinking for him as a non-Malay.

So the couple returned to Nashville, Lionel to attend Vanderbilt Divinity School. There, the first of their two sons was born. Missionary life called him, but to gain experience in the American church, he accepted a call to North Dakota in 1966 before going to Sumatra, Indonesia, and Sarawak.

Two years in New York at the Board of Global Ministries convinced him that he was not an office person, so he returned to the Dakotas to serve parishes until retiring in 1992.

On his travels, Muthiah has been mistaken for everything from Cuban to Indian to South American.

"I feel very much like a global person," he said.

He and Marion settled in Mandan to enjoy Dakota Stage, the symphony, the Civic Chorus.

Since retiring, he has held offices with organizations from the YMCA to the United Way, the Sakakawea Girl Scouts, the Mandan Library, the Kiwanis, Head Start, the International Club, the North Dakota Conference of Churches. He was part of a steering committee to establish a North Dakota Human Rights Coalition.

In North Dakota, he said, "Ilike the change of seasons, the slow pace of life and the level of trust.

"This is my town."