From Union of Catholic Asian News:
Maryknoll Lay Missioner T.T. Hoang with some of the kids she is helping in Cambodia.
By Terry Friel
As a terrified 10-year-old girl, Thu Tam Hoang fled Saigon with her family as the South Vietnamese capital was overrun in April 1975, the deafening sound of bombs and gunfire ringing in her ears as she scrambled onto an overcrowded barge on the Mekong River to the safety of international waters.
After a perilous voyage and a sea rescue by the US Navy, she and her family were taken to a refugee camp in the Philippines, before being flown to the barren US coral atoll of Wake Island, 3,700 kilometers northwest of Honolulu, under the US military’s “Operation New Life” and then finally on to the United States, sponsored by friends of her diplomat father.
“One minute, I was in Vietnam. The next minute, I was in the Philippines and then on to Wake Island, and the next thing you know, I’m in the US,” says Hoang.
Half a century later, the 60-something proudly Vietnamese-American now working in Cambodia as a Maryknoll Lay Missioner, says she has always been one of the lucky ones, “guided by God’s hand.”
“Looking back at my journey of faith, my life journey, God’s hand is in it all the time,” she told UCA News. I felt like I am called. I don’t know what I can do, but I am opening myself to wherever God calls me.
“If I could alleviate any kind of pain and suffering — even one person at a time — I will do that.”
Compelled by faith to engage with people across cultures and ethnicities, Maryknoll lay missioners live, love and work with communities on the margins to promote active nonviolence and healing.
