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By Hahn Ngo, Viet Nam and U.S.A.
Famines, floods and wars have displaced millions of people on planet earth, creating a worldwide refugee problem. My family became refugees when we joined the boat people escaping the Communist regime in Viet Nam.
The Viet Nam war ended in 1975 when the South fell to the Communist North. The intellectuals, the wealthy, the Christians and the mountain people were greatly affected. As rural people we were not a threat to the Communists. My family was not traumatized by the war; it was not fought near us.
Neither of my parents had opportunity for an education. My father was orphaned at a very young age and was raised by his aunt. My mother's father was an alcoholic, so her mother had to work very hard to provide for the family. Though they had little education, my parents were entrepreneurs. They opened coffee shops. My father is very intelligent and a quick learner. He dabbles in everything. He was in the South Viet Nam army when he met and married my mother in 1975. Four children, a boy and three girls, were born to them. I am the third.
Ours was a Buddhist home. Several in my family
were devoted Buddhists. A great-grandfather, a great-grandmother
and a grandmother all became Buddhist
monks. They had endured a lot of suffering. The Buddhist
teaching is that the only way out of the vicious cycle of
suffering is to get rid of desire—especially by becoming a
monk. As a monk you are supposed to be celibate, abstain
from meat and eat only vegetables. Some sects get into
extreme self-denial, such as eating only one meal a day
or never letting yourself get full of food. Rest should not
even be restful, so you should sleep sitting up, and only
for several hours. I have an aunt here in the U.S.A. who
became a monk and is subjecting herself to these routines in
an attempt to relieve her suffering.
After the war there was no political freedom and all
free enterprise ended. My parents could not run their coffee
shops anymore and they were both sent to labor camps.
Dad always managed to escape what he was supposed to
do and came home to take care of
family needs. Food was rationed;
cloth was rationed but my Mom
could buy meat, sugar, and cloth on
the black market.
Things were getting worse.
Mother knew that the future for us
was very grim and she wanted more
for her family. At this time, many
people were leaving Viet Nam. One
of the ways the people were leaving
was by small wooden boats holding
about 25 people. A seat on the boat
cost 4-5 gold bars. My mother
pleaded with her aunt to lend us
the money so we could be part of the boat people. My aunt
graciously gave Mother the money.
The escape project took months of careful planning. My
parents hid the two men who were leading our group. They
had to build the boat, buy the supplies, get the food, water
and the fuel. This took months and months. It was all done
secretly because you didn't know whom you could trust and
who would turn you in to the authorities. The leaders used
our home as a base to do all this. My father became one of
the crew leaders. Among the men there were not a lot of
skills and only some knowledge of navigation.
We left at night because the military government was
very diligent. If you got caught escaping you were put
in jail. Mom told us that if anything happened to us, like
the boat capsizing, we should pray to the female Buddha
goddess and she would come on her dragon and rescue us.
The hope for the immigrants was that we would be picked up by a larger ship, an international ship such as
German, British, French or American. We heard horror
stories of Thai pirates raiding the small boats and killing
the men and raping the women.
The specific plans for the journey were for us to go
to Malaysia, a trip taking three or four days. But we were
adrift at sea for 11 days. On the 8th day both engines
failed and we were simply adrift. A few times ships passed
us, but they did not pick us up.
When we ran out of drinking water, my father was able
to distill a little ocean water, enough to keep us alive. All
the adults thought that we would surely die. However, one
morning we spotted land. We had drifted to the Philippine
Islands. The Filipino people graciously received us and
fed us. We were taken from the little island to the capital
city, Manila, where we stayed for six months until all the
paper work for entrance into the U.S.A. was completed.
A kind, generous man, our sponsor met us at the
Philadelphia airport and drove us to our one-room
apartment. We were provided with clothing and food. I
think food was our biggest adjustment.
Someone informed us that another Vietnamese family
lived nearby. They had arrived a few weeks earlier. My
father went to visit them and was he surprised! There
stood my mother's uncle! We knew they had left, but we
didn't know where they had gone. Now they lived just 20
minutes from us.
The teachers were very kind when we children started
school. I felt lost for just a very short period of time. My
parents worked very hard. Mom worked at a dry cleaners
pressing shirts all day. Dad could sew well, so he got a
job at a factory. On the days Mom came home early from
work she would cook a lot and we would all eat together.
Unfortunately, my parents did not have a happy
marriage. I remember them fighting a lot. My father was
unfaithful to my mother and actually had had another
family in Viet Nam. After we came to the U.S.A. he began
to gamble, a widespread addiction among Asian men. We
had very little, but he would run up huge gambling debts
with money he had borrowed. People would knock on
our door demanding payment and threatening to kill
my father or put him in jail. Each of us children were
deeply affected by his behavior. My elementary school
years were plagued with fear that I would lose my father.
Although my home life was horrible, we really had a
good neighborhood. We were a diverse neighborhood,
but we played together a lot. There was racism, but it did
not affect us. We stayed happily in that neighborhood for
about seven years.
When I was in high school, my family moved to the
suburbs. Dad was in and out of our lives. He would come
home for a few years and then go back to his gambling
habit. Mom had saved some money, so she and Dad bought
a little dry cleaning business and in time were able to buy a
larger one. We children all worked in the business, too.
I did very well in school. My family decided I should
be a doctor to gain respect for the family. Fortunately, I was
not a rebellious child and had an inner drive to succeed. At
the beginning of 9th grade I met my first Christian. Amy
was a Korean girl. I had a large number of Korean friends.
Many were very evangelical. I even attended a youth group
function. To me Christianity was a Western religion and I
wanted to keep my Vietnamese roots.
In a 10th grade English class, I chose to do a
comparative religion paper on Christianity and Buddhism.
I was going to decide at age 15 which I would follow. I
liked what Buddhism said: “Jesus was a good man; we
like him. We accept everyone.” I liked the tolerance of
Buddhism. Christianity seemed so intolerant. At that time I
said I was happy with Buddhism.
After high school I was accepted at Northwestern
University in Chicago. I fell in love with the place
immediately. But a few months into my freshman year
I became very sad. I cried myself to sleep every night. I
prayed to Buddha and lit incense.
At that time a Christian girl named Linaa came
into my life. She had such beauty and peace about her
that immediately attracted me. Linaa told me she was
a Christian and invited me to the Christian InterVarsity
meetings. I kept saying no to her, but I wanted her
friendship, so I finally went. The woman speaker shared
the story of Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman
at the well. She added that we all long and thirst for
something. We seek to fill that void in our lives through a
career, relationships, sex etc. Jesus says, “Come to me and
I will fill you.” Everything I thought about Christianity just
melted away because I met Christ's love.
That night I asked Christ to come into my life and
to make me the woman that He wanted me to be. I now
knew and believed that Jesus died for my sins, and I knew
I received His forgiveness. But what plagued me was my
family situation. I wanted God to redeem my family. I
wanted Him to work a miracle in my home. I gave God six
months to do that.
The folks at InterVarsity tried to disciple me, but I didn't
know how to walk the Christian walk. My Christian friends
confused me in the area of sexual purity; I knew there was
physical intimacy going on. When I didn't see anything
happening in my family's life, I quickly fell away.
In my Junior year I went abroad to Spain to study. I had
a wonderful time there. It was in Spain near the end of the
school year that I experienced my first kiss, and not after lost my purity. (I grew up in a very strict home and was taught that a girl must remain a virgin until marriage
or she was a whore.) I had failed in one of the goals, purity,
that I had set up for my life. The second goal, to be a doctor,
seemed less and less possible to reach.
In my senior year I felt terribly lost. I got involved in some feminist teachings and in a few bad relationships. I tried all year to open doors to go back to Spain to see where that relationship would go. But every door I tried closed. I was graduating from a great university, but I had no prospects of going to medical school and no job. By this time I was really hardened towards Christ. A friend asked me what I believed in and I said, “I once believed in Jesus, but I don't know what I believe anymore.”
A few months after graduation I ran into one of the first Christians I met at the university. He invited me to come to his Baptist Church. It was several weeks before I cautiously ventured to a church service. In time I truly repented and returned to Christ. I grew spiritually and experienced the depth of Christ's mercy and grace toward me.
I lived in Chicago for two more years, working at the Chicago Women's Foundation. Very clearly the Lord laid on my heart to go home to be with my family. He also laid on my heart the desire to share His love with those who have never heard that God loves them and Jesus died for them.
My sister has come to faith in Christ and we go to church together. I am discipling her and her children, as well as several older women. My parents are not yet believers. They divorced in my freshman year. My father has remarried and lives in another part of the country. My mother appreciates what Christ has done for her daughter. She lives with me and my sister. She sold her business after 18 years and travels often to Viet Nam to be with her aged, ailing mother.
While I was working at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, I began pursuing nursing studies. Ten years after graduating from university, I earned a Bachelor in Nursing degree and have an amazing job at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.
I never thought the Lord would want to take such care of me. He really wants to search our hearts and heal us. He doesn't say, “Come to me and I"ll put you to work right away, regardless of your needs.” No, He calls us to Himself that we may first know Him. I now see that He has cared for me and my family all along, before we left Viet Nam, during our preparations for escape from Communism and the harrowing boat journey that followed.
Our family not only gained political freedom as refugees, we have also found spiritual freedom in Christ.
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