Lutheran Heritage Foundation:
THE WORD AT WORK
Volume 30 Number 2 ■ March/April 2023
Hmong language school plants seeds of faith It was 1979. “Do we live for today, or do we live for tomorrow?” Doua Xiong’s father asked himself, as he planned his family’s treacherous journey across Laos’ steep terrain, through narrow river valleys and dense bamboo forests, and ultimately across the Mekong River, into the safety of Thailand’s refugee camps.
A young Hmong student learns how God created the world in LHF’s White Hmong edition of A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories.
Like thousands of other Hmong soldiers who had fought alongside American forces in the Vietnam War, Doua’s father faced a near-certain fate if they stayed in Laos after the U.S. withdrawal: death. And so with their relatives, the Xiong family gathered what little possessions they had and made the dangerous journey into Thailand, where they lived in the refugee camp for eight years before coming to America. Today, more than 300,000 Hmong call America their home, with most settling in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Many still embrace their old religious traditions of animism and shamanism, and still others are atheist. But some have been introduced to the Savior, Jesus Christ - including Doua, who is now an LCMS pastor. Rev. Xiong and his wife, Sue, are committed to sharing the Good News with Hmong people in the United States, and they’ve found a unique way to do so: a Hmong language school, run out of their LCMS congregations in Merced and Fresno, California. “I was nine years old when we came to the United States, and so my generation has easily blended into the American culture,” Rev. Xiong reflected. “But we are still
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