On mission in a forest village of Vietnam
Bao Loc-Dalat (AsiaNews) –Tan Hoa lies in the rural area of Bao Loc, Dalat diocese, 220 Kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City. Parishioners arrived here from the north in 1954 and their traditional livelihood is cultivating tea.
Since then these minorities have slowly come to know the Good News and the Catholic religion. Now, however they need priests to tend to their spiritual needs. “The ethnic groups - Cung, a Tan Hoa Parishioner tells AsiaNews - are very nice. They are simple in their living but they have proved their Catholic faith through their behaviour with everyone in the society. I have taught catechism for children who had gone to class by bare foot. They are innocent and thirty for studying to know read and write Vietnamese. Now we need Bible and catechism books in languages of the ethnic groups to help them develop on spirituality and living”.
Some priests have studied the dialects and now work together with the ethnic groups. “However we lack of young fathers to come here and work with the people - says Father Xuan, parish priest of one churches in the forest. “They need priests, volunteer elementary teachers, professors and doctors to work with them. It is a big land of rice fields that is lacking harvesters”.
The mission boasts volunteers full of enthusiasm, with seminarians sent here in 1968 by the then bishop Simon Hoa Hien at the forefront. Moreover there are many young volunteers who come to help for short periods of time. Particularly at the beginning they were people who dedicated themselves entirely to the mission. Many of them are from the Tan Hoa parishes of Tan Thanh and Bao Loc.
“We cannot just sit one place to wait for people come – says Fr. Nguyen, whose family is from Tan Hoa Parish - to but we have to leave following Jesus’ Call to bring Good New to everyone. The missionaries have to move easily, contact and see people; through the “close distance” we are able to make a friendship and a “close soul” with help and interaction of God. We are priests – missionaries, spreading the Word of God directly to the brothers, more than we just concern to economic services, earning money, politic activities for our position in the society”.
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