 This led to the setting up of one single parish covering the whole of Malaya and Singapore and laid the foundations of another era in the history of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church marking the establishment of the first Mar Thoma parish outside of India.While there were those who doubted the viability of creating a parish out of this scattered community, they had not reckoned on the steady growth of the population.While most Syrian Christians still thought of Malaya as a temporary sojourn, there were signs of increasing commitment to this country; one of the most important was the purchase of a piece of land in Kuala Lumpur, on which to construct a church.