An Interview with Sister Marie

Brittany’s Hope sat down with Sister Marie, the spokesperson for the group, and asked her a few questions about their work in Cam Ranh. [Thanks to Mai-Lynn Abel for her translations of Sister Marie's responses.]

Brittany’s Hope: Tell us about your community of sisters.

Sister Marie: The community of sisters I live in is called Cong Doan Men Thanh Gia Phu Nhon or “House of Love”. This order of sisters is located throughout parts of Vietnam. Eight sisters live here in Cam Ranh, although sometimes we may move back and forth to our other sister convents and church facilities.

The sisters range in age from 27 to 81. We are very close to one another and have a great deal of love for each other. Our local church was built in 1956 and suffered severe damage during the Vietnam War. During that time we fled the area or went underground, until the church was rebuilt in 2002. Local believers and French believers provided the money to complete the new church on the land we had owned for many years.

B’s Hope: Tell me more about your lives during the war.

Sister Marie: During the war we were basically driven underground and persecuted for our beliefs as Christians; we were forced to worship in local people’s homes and required to dress in typical clothes. Some religious moved around in the areas which were hardest oppressed, going from place to place to avoid detection. We wore disguises and kept a low profile. Some of our religious were arrested and jailed, even executed for being outspoken about the injustices.

It was a very difficult time for all of us, however we never gave up our faith in God or our hope that things would improve. Luckily… or if you are a believer then… by God’s miracle, most of our beautiful cathedrals and convents survived the bombings. Most of the religious simply stayed inside their convents and churches preferring to face the destruction and brutality head-on, and being available to help the citizens of our war-torn country. Things are certainly better, but even today we would probably be arrested if we wore our religious habits outside of the orphanage or our convent.

B’s Hope: How are things today?

Sister Marie: Officially, Christianity is not recognized in this country, although people are practicing it outwardly. Christians can attend church without fear of reprisal or arrest these days. Christians are still a minority and are viewed as odd by the majority of citizens in this country; often you will find Christians live in small communities together where they feel safer and are less likely to experience prejudice. Cam Ranh is a primarily Catholic region and it is very isolated both geographically and socially from greater Vietnam.

B’s Hope: Why is there so much poverty in this area?

Sister Marie: Cam Ranh is historically an under-developed farming region of Vietnam consisting of isolated areas divided by mountains on one side and oceans on the other. Most of the local citizens are members of some sort of an ethnic tribe and are considered independent nations by the government. Many of them are born high on the mountainsides and rarely come down. They never get an education of any sort, or see a doctor, or have any opportunity to earn any substantial amount of income. There are very limited employment opportunities, poor schools, and no medical facilities of any sort. The local people make crafts, gather wood, make charcoal, or dry fish to survive. They work hard and die young after having large families. As if this is not enough, this region was very hard hit during the war and is still recovering both economically and geographically.

B’s Hope: Why does the government not offer more help to the poor of this region?

Sister Marie: Remember that we have a communist government which does not allow freedom of religion; most of this region is Catholic because of the French influence.

The government simply refuses to help those regions who do not adhere to communist principles. Add in the fact that residents are ethnic minorities, which are very devalued in our Communist culture; and that the local officials and policeman refuse to intervene in crimes among the ethnic minorities stating they are responsible for governing their own nations. Quite simply there are no real social services in this area; we are the only aid to local people with the exception of some outside international help coming in on occasion. However, it is difficult for international organizations to get governmental approval to operate here (because of the prejudice by the government) and consequently, very little comes to this region compared to other poor regions.

B’s Hope: Why does the government look the other way while you help the local people?

Sister Marie: Many of the local officials do feel bad for the mountain tribes, even if their hands are tied by their position. We have been here living and worshipping a long time among the locals; the officials trust us to do our work and keep a low profile. We know the subtle nuisances necessary to work under the radar. If we do our work, do not ask for much, and are polite and courteous (sometimes that means buying gifts for the officials) we are able to help the local people.

B’s Hope: Are you the only orphanage in the area?

Sister Marie: Yes, although officially we are not a recognized orphanage. The government owns ALL orphanages and social centers of any kind in Vietnam; they want to control them. So we call ourselves a catholic facility, although we house abandoned and orphaned children and 18 homeless elderly people here currently.

B’s Hope: How many children live here on a permanent basis?

Sister Marie: That number is always changing according to the need. Currently we have 33 children living here from ages one month to 21 years.

B’s Hope: In addition to the children who live here, you seem to have other children from the community here daily.

Sister Marie: Yes, that is true. We also daycare and educate about 20 preschoolers from local poor families who need a safe place for their children while they work. We see that the children from the community get one good meal a day while they are here. For some children it may be the only meal they get that day.

B’s Hope: And the older children who are here?

Sister Marie: We also teach other local low-income children who can not afford school. We are all university educated and most of us have a teaching degree. We are really the only free school in the area; we educate children from 1st to 8th grade, and even help them prepare to take the college entrance exam. Most of the children come from very under-privileged family situations.

B’s Hope: Sounds as if you have a great deal of responsibilities to do; how do you fund what you do?

Sister Marie: We receive some minimal donations, but mostly we support our work hrough farming. We have a number of acres here, so we rice farm and grow bananas. Typically we also breed our water buffaloes and sell or give away the babies to the locals.

B’s Hope: Who does the farming?

Sister Marie: (laughs) Well, we do… and the children help us to plant and harvest the rice. Sometimes a few local people may offer some help as well. Everyone pitches in and helps around here! This year we had a flood and our entire rice crop and banana trees where destroyed. It was a disaster for us because we had to purchase rice to feed the children. To make matters worse, our animals caught a disease brought by the flood and most of them died…. all 5 of our water buffaloes, our 50 chickens, and 5 of our 7 pigs.

B’s Hope: That was a crushing blow to your organization!

Sister Marie: Yes, it certainly was! We stayed up long nights nursing the animals, but one by one they died. We could not eat the meat because of the disease so we had to dispose of the bodies. What do you do with a dead water buffalo?!!

B’s Hope: What did you do?

Sister Marie: Well, we laugh about it now! You should have seen 6 nuns and several frail children dragging the dead buffaloes to the farthest corner of our fields to bury them! We must have been a sight!

B’s Hope: I can’t even imagine how long it took you to dig the holes!!!

Sister Marie: Yes (laughing), we only have one shovel!

B’s Hope: Tell me about the services you perform in the community?

Sister Marie: We assist people with leprosy, finding them safe shelter and medical care, purchasing supplies for them and helping their families. We also educate their neighbors working to eradicate prejudice against those with leprosy. We assist the local elderly who are living alone and have no relatives to care for them; we often encourage them to move here to our facility. We go up into the mountains hiking several days and service the ethnic groups residing there; we deliver babies, take the ill to the hospital one hour away, we teach the illiterate older people, we bring them supplies and food and medicines. We also encourage parents to send their older children who have real potential to our school in the village; this is the only way their children will be able to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty. And of course, we teach Sunday school, local school, and tutor older children who are behind in their studies.

We also try to educate local people about the perils of abortion; abortion not only murders the baby, but it is very hard on the woman’s body. Many women here do not use birth control and have multiple abortions; we also teach Natural Family Planning to families.

B’s Hope: Tell us about your work with the local abortion clinic.

Sister Marie: Well, we cannot protest it as we would be immediately arrested and shut down as a facility, so we only council quietly on the side. Instead, we pay the local abortion clinic to collect their aborted fetuses. We must pay $7.00 US to the nurse there for the dead fetuses. We probably get 15 to 30 babies every month from the clinic. We believe there is a soul in every baby’s body and that they need rest for their souls, so we bring them home to the orphanage and we take them out back and bury them in our field. We name them and pray over them, before we bury them with dignity.

One of our beautiful toddler babies that resides here was one of those aborted babies. A number of years back we began to debate if we should spend the money on babies that were already dead; or would our money be better spent on the living children in our care? Then one day we came home with 4 or 5 dead fetuses from the clinic. We were in the back field about to bury them when we noticed one of them was breathing. We cleaned her and fed her and she is alive and well today. After that we never questioned spending the money for the fetuses again.

B’s Hope: That is an amazing story…..and you are an amazing group of women! There is such a spirit of love here!

Sister Marie: We are only doing what God has called us to do! We cannot take credit for His work.