St. Vincent de Paul Society

Adopt-A-Family Program | 2007
Program

New American Heroes: Christine Truong
Vietnamese nun helps immigrants deal with all the challenges a new land brings

Published on: 11/24/05

Joey Ivansco/Staff Sister Christine of the Order of Good Shepherd Sisters explains the Thanksgiving holiday to Vietnamese immigrants (from left) Toan Do, Hung Vo and Duon Ngo. She says an investment in America's new citizens is repaid many times over.

When Vietnamese native Christine Truong, a Catholic nun of the Order of Good Shepherd Sisters, arrived in Georgia a few days before Thanksgiving in 1991, she found herself confronted with a challenge of sizable proportions four frozen turkeys.

"In Vietnam, we eat very small portions of fish and meat; anything that big is not to be eaten," she says.

Puzzled, she turned to American-born nun Sister Pauline, who volunteered to cook one of the turkeys for a communal Thanksgiving feast with Vietnamese refugees. Sister Christine hauled the other turkeys to the Vietnamese community and asked some families to prepare them. Their eyes widened, and they asked, "How are we going to eat this big bird?'

On Thanksgiving, Sister Pauline arrived with her glistening baked bird on a platter. But where, she wondered, were the other turkeys?

"They had chopped the turkeys into bite-size pieces and cooked them with curry and barbecue," said Sister Christine, still laughing at the memory.

Since coming to Atlanta and opening Good Shepherd Services in Chamblee, Sister Christine has become adept at dicing big problems into more manageable bites. At 53, she remains slight and quick, hoisting herself easily onto a desktop to chat in Vietnamese with refugees who only arrived in Atlanta last month.

Funded through state and federal grants and private donations, Good Shepherd helps struggling immigrants, most of whom are from Vietnam, navigate their new country. Money and grants have become tight in the last year, and the annual budget now is less than $200,000. Still, Sister Christine knits together the resources to maintain English lessons, citizenship classes, elderly services, after-school programs and parenting classes.

While grateful for the donations she receives, Sister Christine says she wishes America would invest more in its new citizens. Because she believes the investment repays itself many times over.

It is not in her culture to talk about one's self, so it takes cajoling to prod Sister Christine to share her own family's immigrant saga. Her father had been a high-ranking politician in Vietnam, and Sister Christine and her six brothers and sisters lived an upper-class existence, including boarding school. Their comfortable world eroded when their mother died at age 42 and their father later became a political prisoner.

In 1975, Sister Christine was a young nun in Saigon ministering to poor women, widows and prostitutes. Ten days before the fall of Saigon to Communist North Vietnamese forces, she escaped to San Francisco, bringing 160 handicapped orphans with her.

Also in her care were her little brothers, ages 8 and 10. However, a year later, her religious order dispatched her to Hong Kong. She could not take her brothers, so she found a family in Georgia willing to take them into their home. So tenuous was her grasp of America's geography that she reassured her family back in Vietnam: "I have sent them to Georgia next to California."

Eventually, all her siblings and her father escaped to America and settled for a time in Atlanta, eking out a livelihood from whatever jobs they could find. Her father parked cars at a downtown hotel; her brother toiled in an Asian market near Emory University; her older sister cleaned house for a wealthy family in Roswell.

So strong was her father's drive to see his family thrive that he dropped his daughter off in Roswell at 6:30 in the morning even though her employers slept until 9.

"My sister sat outside waiting for them to wake up," says Sister Christine. "And when she told my father that she was done by 4, he told her that she should work until 8 so that she would not lose her job, and he would not pick her up until then. Sometimes, the family would go out for dinner or a party, and she would sit outside in the dark waiting for my father."

Sister Christine describes many other painful vignettes: her brother at the gates of Emory imaging a day when he could attend college, her father taking a job as a school janitor so he could be around books and learning.

Today, a brother works for NASA. Another teaches college. One is an engineer. Sister Christine preaches the American dream because her siblings who, like her, are now U.S. citizens have lived it. Still, she says it is harder now for immigrants because there are so few jobs. Most Asian immigrants come to America legally, sponsored by family members already here. Their families assume most of the expenses for them.

What they need from the greater community is help learning the language and job skills. Sister Christine understands the resentment of some Georgians to their new neighbors.

"They think that immigrants take jobs away, but they work hard looking for work and they want to work because they don't want to rely on taxes from other people's work," she says.

While Asian immigrants may take a while to warm up to turkey Sister Christine says newcomers compare it to "chewing cotton" they understand instantly the thanksgiving part of today's gathering.

"Thanksgiving is an opening for them to appreciate the graces they receive from God and from America," she says. "They want to really work hard here and give back so they are not a burden to their families or to their new country."

For information or to make a donation to Good Shepherd, call 770-455-9379.

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