Mission momentum continues in Vietnam
From left, Local pastor Linh Ma, Rev. Karen To and Rev. Ut To represented Vietnam at the Summit.
Rev. Ut To and his wife, Rev. Karen To came to the summit from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. They also brought a local pastor, Linh Ma, from one of their churches.
The Tos are Vietnamese but they received their education and seminary training in the US. They returned to Vietnam six years ago to help lead the growing UM church in their country.
They now pastor 63 churches and their ministry includes two training programs---a course of study for local pastors and an advanced course of study for ordination.
Rev Ut To said, "It is helpful to meet people from other mission initiatives. We meet and learn together. We learn about their ministries and share ours with them. It is good to meet the volunteer-in-mission leaders from other conferences. Today I spoke to Jeremy, a mission leader in the Oklahoma Conference, and he is now planning for a mission team to visit Vietnam. We want to invite mission teams to come to Vietnam."
The Tos remember when Bishop Scott Jones came to visit Vietnam in 2005. Rev. Jones was a professor at Perkins School of Theology when he traveled to Vietnam to help train the local pastors. Rev. Ut To and Rev. Karen To are elders in the Detroit Annual Conference.
The biggest challenge in Vietnam is that the government does not recognize the United Methodist Church. This prevents the local church from building a Methodist center. There are United Methodist churches in the country, but they are not recognized by the government. By contrast, the Vietnamese government does recognize the Catholic church and the evangelical church, which have been present in the country for over 100 years.
Rev. Karen To said, "We have 13 female local pastors now. In our churches, if they have ten members or less, we call it a meeting group. If they have 15 to 20 people, we call it a church. Five of our churches have more than 15 people."
Linh Ma is one of the female local pastors now working with the Tos. As a young girl, Linh Ma's uncle first took her to the Christian church and she remembered how she liked singing the Christmas songs. She told her father that she wanted to be a Christian and she started to read the Bible in her own language. As a teenager in High School, she stopped her Christian studies. When she was a university student, she met Rev. Ut To and Rev. Karen To, and with their encouragement, she decided to enroll in Wesley Theology College in 2001 and became a local pastor.
Linh Ma states confi dently, "I am a happier person now that I am a Christian. I am now a local pastor and share the Word among my people." Linh said many of the people in her church are very poor. "I see my work as being a minister to these people, my people."
