Vietnamese couple nurtures ministry in Birmingham

  In 1985 Can Ngoc Le and his wife, Xuan Huong Thi Pham, were granted permission by the communist government in Vietnam to leave their native country and join relatives in the United States.
   
Such permission, they said, was rarely given to any citizens — especially not those such as Le who had served in the former government and spent time in a “re-education” or prison camp.
   
In fact, only days after Le and Pham departed, police arrived at their former home, planning to arrest them and revoke the permission they had received to leave Vietnam.
   
It was only through a series of miracles that they made it safely to freedom.
Once in the United States they knew they wanted to devote their time to serving Christ and helping others come to know Him.
   
“We knew God had a special purpose for us — not just freedom,” said Pham.
   
“The fact that we are here is due to a lot of prayers,” she added.
   
In 2003 the two left a successful Vietnamese ministry in the Washington, D.C., area to come to Birmingham and start Vietnamese Baptist Church at Liberty Park Baptist Church.
   
“We are delighted to have Rev. Le and Dr. Pham in our midst. They love the Lord and have a heart to reach the Vietnamese community in Birmingham,” said James Bruton, senior pastor of Liberty Park Baptist Church. “They bring a long and varied background to this work [and] have a vision for ministering both to the spiritual and social needs of their people.”
   
Weekly services draw about 15 to 25 people, many who haven’t attended church in 20 years or more, if ever.
   
“For the Vietnamese people here, there was no opportunity to listen to the gospel,” said Le. “We decided we would like to move here.”
   
Birmingham was also attractive to the couple, since Pham’s mother and sister live in the city and their son is a student at Samford University.
   
Pham helps her husband in the ministry but also works for the American Bible Society (ABS) as a translator. She and a team of biblical scholars are translating the Contemporary English Version (CEV) into Vietnamese, set for release in 2005.
   
“The goal is to put the Bible into everyone’s hands,” she said, “to translate the meaning into their own words, so they can have salvation in Christ.”
   
Pham pointed out that archaeologists are constantly learning more about the languages in which the Bible was first written, and that the English language is always evolving and changing. The first CEV Bible, released in 1995, was translated from original Hebrew and Greek and, she believes, was an accurate translation at the time.
   
“Every 10 years, we should have a revision, to bring it up-to-date,” she added.
   
Pham works at home, keeping connected with colleagues through e-mail and telephone. Several times a year she goes to New York to the ABS headquarters for meetings.
   
Becoming a Bible translator was not something Pham ever thought she would do when she was teaching English back in Vietnam.  In fact, she and her husband didn’t think they could be more than lay ministers in their nondenominational church.
   
But the plans God had for Le and Pham have fallen into place since they left their home country. They prayed for the right opportunities and wrote numerous letters to ministries connected to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which had had a presence in Vietnam.
   
“We knew we would like some formal training,” Pham said. “We both wanted to study.”
   
Originally, they were set to enter New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and work with a small ministry in the city.
   
However, at the last minute funding was unavailable. In 1987 both entered Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisburg, Va. After graduation, Le planted a Vietnamese church in Fairfax, which started with no members, but grew to include 60.
   
While working with her husband in the ministry, Pham continued going to school, eventually earning a Ph.D. in biblical studies through the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Her 1997 dissertation was included as part of the series, “Journal for the Study of the Old Testament,” published by Sheffield Publishing in England.
   
Though Le and Pham were both raised as Christians in Vietnam, they said most people in the country practice a hodge-podge religion, which includes bits of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and paganism. “It’s difficult for Vietnamese people to be Christian,” Le added.
   
Many of the Vietnamese people living in Birmingham do not have a background in Christianity.
   
Because of language and cultural barriers, they aren’t likely to come to know Christ, even with so many Christians and Christian churches in the city.
   
But Le and Pham are able to reach out to them on a personal level. “We are trying to build a friendship first,” Le said.
   
Once those attending the church accept Christ, he said, they still don’t always know what it means to be a Christian. “Our task is to try to teach the group so they know more about what they believe and why,” he said. “We would like them to stand firm and witness.”