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barrykind
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Serving Christ Has a Price
Vietnamese Pastor Recalls Persecution
By Nathan Ray Thomas
August 13, 2002

WINSTON-SALEM, NC (AgapePress) - Among the Vietnamese refugee community, whether it's the Montagnards or the ethnic Vietnamese themselves, one poignant reality stands out when talking with them -- the communist Vietnamese government hates Christians.

Reports of religious tolerance by the government, they say, are lies and propaganda. They have experienced the full force of Hanoi's persecution of Christians. They are not bitter or fatalistic, but take life in stride and pray that God will work things out for them.

Christians in America seldom face the kind of persecution they have experienced. Family members and friends left behind still feel the heavy hand of the communist government pressing down on them. Some were left behind because their exit visas were denied; others were denied entry visas by the United States.

One out of the many who has experienced this agony is Tran, an ethnic Vietnamese, and my translator, who asks me to use only his last name. He is fearful that the communist government would accuse him of engaging in subversive activity here in the U.S. against Vietnam.

Christian activity of any kind by Vietnamese nationals, inside the country or abroad, is considered subversive and treasonous by the Hanoi regime, and draws large fines and long prison sentences for the least of alleged infractions.

Tran arrived in California in 1999 with his brother on a worker's visa, ministering to the Vietnamese community as pastor. Later, he was able to get his visa changed to a student status. Tran's wife and two children had to stay behind due to U.S. State Department paperwork problems.

Tran thinks about his wife and two sons, but says he's not preoccupied about it. "I don't have time to be lonely," he said, "I am so busy. I do think about them, but I just wait and let the Lord work things out."

Busy is an understatement. Tran drives Montagnards to work and back, interprets for them, is the pastor to the Vietnamese community in Winston-Salem, and community liaison. Montagnards speak their own tribal language and Vietnamese. Few speak English before arriving. Tran speaks only Vietnamese and English. The arrangement works out fine.

Tran, the second son of a Chinese father and Vietnamese mother, has been witness of God's provision many times before immigrating. Tran's parents, younger brother and sister are still in Vietnam.

In 1962 Tran's father became a Christian at age 14 and three years later attended Bible school at Nhatrant near Cameron Bay. After graduating, he became a pastor to the Montagnards. Ministering to Montagnards can sometime be difficult, according to Tran, because they have strong ties to ancestor worship. However, once converted to Christ, they become strong Christians.

"One Montagnard Christian said, ‘We now have Jesus in our hearts, we don't need Ho Chi Minh'," Tran said with a smile.

His father's first serious brush with the communist government came in 1978 when he was put in prison for two years for being suspected of being a Montagnard leader because he was their pastor. Out, but under the watchful eye of police, Tran's father was sent back to prison in 1983 for two more years for refusing to cooperate with government authorities and become a registered, state-sponsored pastor.

Out of prison since 1985, Tran's father is always under the vigilant watch of local police. To add indignity to his ignominy, police confiscated his national I.D. card and residency certificate, effectively making him a non-person.

"So now he sneaks around, sometimes in camouflage," Tran says with a grin. "When he returns, they come up to him and say, ‘We know where you go.' He just laughs."

For reasons that can only be explained as paranoid, communists authorities are on heightened alert against national Christians during the two major national holidays -- April 30 (fall of Saigon) and National Day on September 2 (independence from France).

"[After 1975] they visit the family, check the house, and look in everything," Tran explained. "I don't know what they thought he was going to do?"

"Now, they just come and visit -- they knock on the door at two in the morning. I think the harder life makes us stronger in the Lord."

Tran relayed the Lord's provision, how, when still at home in the 1980s, his father had his residency card taken away. "You couldn't buy food, we couldn't even buy rice," he said. "Other churches took up donations. They gave us the best of the food they had. We had the best rice, the best of everything."

"That's how God supplied for us for all those years. People worried about us and wondered how we would eat. The time we had hard life in Vietnam, it makes us want to know God more."

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Nathan Ray Thomas writes for The Triad World, a weekly Christian newspaper in Greensboro, North Carolina.
© 2002 AgapePress all rights reserved

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The HEART of the issue is truly the issue of the HEART!
John 3:3;Mark 8:34-38;James 1:27

Posts: 3529 | From: Orange, Texas | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator


 
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